THE 

HISTORICAL 
SOURCES OF 
DEFOE'S 
JOURNAL 
OF THE 
PLAGUE 
YEAR 



Dr. Watson Nicholson 







Class 



Book- y?? 7 Lj 7-Zs 
Copyright^ 












i 






COFmiGHT DEPOSm 



THE 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S 
JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 



THE HISTORICAL SOURCES 

OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL OF THE 

PLAGUE YEAR 

Illustrated 

BY EXTRACTS FROM THE ORIGINAL DOCU- 
MENTS IN THE BURNEY COLLECTION 
AND MANUSCRIPT ROOM IN THE 
BRITISH MUSEUM 

By WATSON NICHOLSON, Ph.D. 
li 

AUTHOR OF 

"The Struggle for a Free Stage in London" 



1919 

THE STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Massachusetts 



1 



^Y« 



Copyright 1920 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



MAY -5 I92U 
©CLA566847 



PREFACE 

At the outbreak of the Great War, and for some 
years prior to that world catastrophe, I was working 
in the British Museum, the Public Eecord Office, and 
the Lord Chamberlain's Office in London, pursuing 
certain investigations pertaining to the history of 
the English Drama and Stage. Throughout my quest 
among the documents of the years 1664 and 1665, I 
was again and again impressed with numerous strik- 
ing resemblances between contemporaneous details of 
the Great Plague and Defoe's account in his Journal 
of the Plague Year, With a piqued curiosity I fol- 
lowed these clues until I had amassed overwhelming 
evidence of the complete authenticity of Defoe's 
"masterpiece of the imagination." These proofs 
were then submitted to a few scholars in England and 
America, and the unanimous and emphatic judgment 
of these critics was, that I had established beyond 
cavil the historical character of Defoe's famous 
Journal, hitherto not merely accepted, but acclaimed 
and declaimed, as fiction. However, to make assur- 
ance doubly sure, I pursued the investigation still 
further, and, in more than two hundred instances 
(not to mention the scores of statistical figures), re- 
corded in the following pages, traced to their sources 
statements made by Defoe in the Journal of the 
Plague Year. In most cases the word-for-word 
originals have been quoted (or cited), and, added to 
these, equally convincing parallels have multiplied 



PREFACE 

the proofs that Defoe relied upon facts in compiling 
his history of the Plague. So great is the mass of 
contemporaneous evidence leading to the conclusion 
arrived at in the course of this study that the bulk of 
the valuable data collected from the printed and un- 
printed sources has had to be omitted, both from the 
discussion and from the appendices, although a suf- 
ficient number of extracts have been included to es- 
tablish fully the historical basis of every statement 
made by Defoe in the Journal of the Plague Year. 
The discovery and significance of the proofs herewith 
submitted were publicly accredited to me by Profes- 
sor "William Lyon Phelps in the Bookman (New 
York) for November, 1915. 

W. N. 

"Deer Lodge" 
South Haven, Michigan 
July 4, 1919. 



VI 



CONTENTS 

PREFACE . PAGE 

I. Originals and Parallels of the Stories in 

Defoe's Journal 1 

II. The Historical Sources of the Journal . 48 

III. Errors in the Journal . . . .82 

IV. Summary 97 

V. Excerpts from the Original Sources of 
the Journal and from Hitherto Unpub- 
lished Documents Illustrative of the 
Plague: 

A. From Hodges 's Loimologia . 101 

B. From Vincent's God's Terrible 

Voice in the City . . . 116 

C. From Boghurst's Loimographia 124 

D. From Kemp's Brief Treatise . 128 

E. From J. V.'s Golgotha . . 130 

F. From Shutting Up of Houses in 

London 134 

G. From Thucydides 's Account of 

the Plague in Athens . . 137 

H. From Harleian MSS. . . 139 

vii 



CONTENTS 

PREFACE PAGE 

I. From the Unpublished Corres- 
pondence of the Reverend 
Symon Patrick . . . 153 

J. From Flavins Josephus's Works 166 

K. From the Bills of Mortality Cov- 
ering Plague Years in London 
from 1603-1666, inclusive . 169 

L. From Reports of the Parish 

Clerks in London, 1664- '5 . 172 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 177 



vm 



When a tradition once becomes established by the 
hallmark of acknowledged authority, it takes more 
than cold facts to uproot it from men's minds, — -it 
takes time. Thus, from a careless statement, at- 
tributed to Sir Walter Scott, that Defoe's Journal of 
the Plague Year belongs to that "peculiar class of 
compositions which hovers between romance and his- 
tory," others, wholly ignorant of the real facts, have 
enlarged upon the theme of the fictional element in the 
Journal until now it is innocently catalogued under 
"fiction" by reputable publishers. Even Sir Henry 
Ellis, in 1827, then Keeper of the MSS. in the British 
Museum, in a prefatory note to some letters concern- 
ing the Great Plague of 1665 (printed in Original 
Letters, 2nd Ser., Vol. IV), asserted, without qualifica- 
tion, that Defoe's Journal "was an entire fiction." 
This bald dictum often has been embroidered upon by 
unwitting editors, to the effect, for example, that the 
Journal is a masterpiece in its verisimilitude, and, 
although it presents many actual facts and figures, it 
is to be eschewed as a reliable reference on the Plague. 
Others have gotten so confused by their certainty, on 
the one hand, that the work is primarily one of the 
imagination, and, on the other, that it contains many 
probable facts, that the result falls little short of 
nonsense. For instance, Walter Wilson in his 
Memoirs of Defoe (1830, III, 510-13) informs us that 
"it would baffle the ingenuity of any but Defoe to 

[1] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

frame a history, of so many attributes, upon the basis 
of fiction. " And Sir Walter Besant (Introduction to 
the Journal, Century Classics, p. xix) tells us that 
"that great physician, Dr. Mead, was so much de- 
ceived by the ' Journal' that he took it for an authentic 
document/' and, immediately afterwards, that "no 
more authentic document could have been produced ! ' ' 
Again, in the last edition of the Dictionary of National 
Biography (Art. "Defoe"), we read that Defoe's nar- 
rative "has an air of authority which imposed upon 
Dr. Mead . . . who quotes it as an authority." So, 
also, one of the latest editors of the Journal (ed. 
Everyman's Library, Introduction, p. ix) has a simi- 
lar statement, viz., that it is "in some respects Defoe's 
masterpiece; and its realism, which is unsurpassed, 
caused Dr. Mead, the eminent physician of the time, 
to refer to the book some years afterwards as an au- 
thority;" and the latest edition (11th) of Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica (Art. "Plague") warns the reader 
that ' ' Defoe 's fascinating Journal of a Citizen should 
be read and admired as a fiction, but accepted with 
caution as history. ' ' 

There have been a few writers, indeed, heretical 
enough to break away from the ranks and assert that 
the Journal is legitimate history; but as these have 
merely asserted without proofs, their opinions are 
naturally passed over. 1 The general concensus is that 
Defoe creates a realistic atmosphere, and gives a cor- 

1 Thus Mr. Thomas Wright in his "Life of Defoe" (1894) iterates 
and reiterates (pp. 98, 230, 235, 294), "that the 'Journal' is 
veritable history, there is not the least doubt." In 1872, Mr. 
E. W. Brayley edited the "Journal" and supplied a great 
number of facts from contemporaneous sources relating to the 
Plague; but he made no attempt to establish Defoe's work as 
history. 

[2] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

rect impression of the Plague, but that he cannot 
be relied upon as an historian, that facts with him 
are but materials for his imagination, and that an art- 
ful style and inventive genius fix the Journal as a 
work of fiction rather than a narrative of historic 
facts. The foregoing quotations are sufficient evi- 
dence of the general belief. The simple truth is, how- 
ever, there is not a single essential statement in the 
Journal not based on historic fact. Even the stories 
ascribed to Defoe 's invention have their origins in real 
contemporaneous events. Indeed, one of Defoe's 
crowning achievements in compiling the Journal con- 
sisted in curbing his natural predilection for inven- 
tion, and adhering to strict facts as he found them 
in printed sources or got them directly from the sur- 
vivors of 1665. Defoe himself asserts (Introduction 
to Due Preparations) — and there is no sufficient rea- 
son to doubt him — that he well remembered the Great 
Plague. Defoe was about six in 1665, and, besides, 
he had a vast fund of dismal and graphic stories from 
the older survivors of the Plague. But here again the 
fiction theorist bolsters up his hypothesis with, "The 
truth itself is not believed from one who often has de- 
ceived/' and it is explained that Defoe warped and 
exaggerated actual conditions in order to heighten 
the effects of history. However, for one who has 
examined the sources of the Journal, it would be diffi- 
cult, indeed, to conceive how the actual horrors of the 
Plague Year could be exaggerated. It is true there 
are slips and errors in the Journal (to be noted in an- 
other connexion), but scarcely one of these is essential 
to the correctness of the narrative as a whole, and they 

[3] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

are almost invariably due to misinformation or haste, 
and not to deliberate intention. This will more fully 
appear when it is understood that contemporaneous 
accounts of the Plague are not always in absolute 
accord in every detail, and that sometimes there are 
positive errors recorded. This fact explains most of 
Defoe's errors in the Journal. In general, he was 
scrupulously careful to avoid all appearances of mis- 
representation. Indeed, in some instances where he 
warns us that he is not vouching for the truthfulness 
of a given statement, he is still quite in harmony with 
the facts. On the whole when we consider the short 
time Defoe must have given himself to fling his 
materials together — for so it was really done, and not 
as the result of a studied carelessness, as is sometimes 
supposed — the Journal is remarkably free from errors, 
and is, in the main, far more authentic than many 
another work that passes for history. In short, 
Defoe's chief purpose in the Journal was to give his- 
toric facts, and his deviations from actual facts are 
comparatively few and unimportant. 

The failure of editors and commentators to recog- 
nize this truth, or, possibly their want of curiosity, 
has led them into strange absurdities. Following one 
another in the assumption that the Journal is mainly 
fiction, they have been compelled, like mediaeval 
theologians, to bolster up their hypothesis by further 
assumptions. Thus, it is argued, there must have 
been an incentive and a motive, other than a desire to 
write history, in composing the Journal. Naturally, 
the incentive was a commercial one. And the motive ? 
Well, in 1720, Marseilles was visited by a most 

[4] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

devastating Plague which swept away nearly 100,000 
of her inhabitants. London's terrible experience of 
1665 was still fresh in the memories of many then 
living, and, to prepare her citizens against such an- 
other calamity, Defoe, forsooth, wrote a fiction entitled 
a Journal of the Plague Year. A mere statement of 
the theory proves its absurdity. Besides, the Journal 
did not appear for over a year after the Plague had 
ceased in Marseilles. Moreover, the public had been 
warned repeatedly by more than a score of volumes, 
beginning with Dr. Richard Mead's Short Discourse 
Concerning Pestilential Contagion, prepared as the 
result of a Royal Order, in 1720, as soon as the report 
of the Marseilles Plague reached England. Owing to 
Mead's contention that pestilence is a contagious dis- 
ease, a perfect shower of controversial books and 
pamphlets on the subject was cast upon the public. 
That the intense interest aroused by the Marseilles 
Plague suggested the Journal there is not the slightest 
doubt, and it is no less certain that the motive sug- 
gested above for writing it is not the true one, for not 
only had that warning and preparation been given by 
others, admittedly more capable than Defoe for such 
a task, and that too in 1720, but also, Defoe would 
hardly have waited to publish a half-dozen other books 
before writing the Journal had he looked upon the lat- 
ter as a humanitarian duty he was called upon to per- 
form. Even his Due Preparations for the Plague 
could have had little direct relation to the Marseilles 
Plague, for the reason just stated, although it was 
avowedly written for the enlightenment of people of 
all classes, as to how to escape the distemper in case it 

[5] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

should again visit England. The simplicity and 
directness of the latter book compared with the 
heterogeneous character of the Journal would also 
indicate the purpose of the Due Preparations. Aside 
from this consideration, it is very probable that the 
last-mentioned book was an aftermath of the Journal 
— common practice with Defoe — and also that it was 
intended to supply practical, simple advice to the 
people, in place of the confused, contradictory, and 
unintelligible muddle of directions that were foisted 
upon the public as a result of the controversy over 
Dr. Mead's book. If the Journal had been written 
with a similar motive, then all the statistics, relation 
of the progress of the distemper, most of the stories, 
descriptions of the appearance of the town, domestic 
and foreign trade, in fact everything in the book ex- 
cept those moralizing passages concerning the treat- 
ment and care of the diseased, in case the Plague 
should ever again visit England, would have been 
omitted and practical advice substituted. In other 
words, the materials and their treatment in the Journal 
are historical, those of Due Preparations admonitory. 
In fact, such advice as does appear in the Journal, 
given as if original with Defoe (hence lending a 
fictional tint to the narrative) , is borrowed directly 
from his sources, Hodges, Kemp, Sydenham, Diemer- 
broeck, Mead, etc. 

The mention of Dr. Mead makes it necessary to 
revert to the oft-quoted assertion that he was deceived 
by Defoe whom he quoted as authority on the Plague, 
The absurdity of this myth will appear at once when 
it is pointed out that, in the first place, Defoe and 

[6] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Mead were contemporaries (Mead was born in 1673) 
and the latter would scarcely be taken in regarding 
events that happened so near his own time ; and, sec- 
ondly, Mead was himself an eminent specialist in 
pestilential diseases, and when he was appointed in 
1720 (as already mentioned) to prepare a treatise to 
assist in warding off the Marseilles distemper, he made 
a searching study of the history of plague and of its 
treatment. That he should have been ignorant of the 
matters treated of by Defoe in the Journal is incon- 
ceivable. Nay, not only did he have a much broader 
knowledge of the subject than did Defoe, but instead 
of the latter furnishing him with facts concerning the 
Plague of 1665, the very reverse is true. One of the 
amusing things about it all is, that Mead's Discourse 
Concerning the Plague went through eight editions 
before Defoe's Journal appeared. It is hardly neces- 
sary to point out (except to" future editors of the 
Journal) that Mead in none of these eight editions 
could have borrowed from the Journal, However, in 
1744, Dr. Mead revised his book on the Plague, when 
he referred, on one page only (p. 106) to the Journal. 
This was in connection with the evil effects of shutting 
up victims of the distemper, a practice which led some 
in their delirium to break out of their prisons to seek 
refuge with their friends in the country, or build huts 
and tents for themselves in the open fields, or get on 
board ships in the river, or voluntarily shut them- 
selves up in self-defence. 

Now, assuming that all this were mere fiction (an 
assumption impossible from the nature of the disease 
and of humanity), it would not, in the first place, 

[7] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

be such a tremendous feat of the imagination; and, 
secondly, seeing that it is but a single instance, one 
would hardly be justified in asserting that Dr. Mead 
had been very greatly taken in. The whole assump- 
tion, however, falls to the ground when it is known 
that every word of the passage in question is true, and 
common to the history of all plagues. Diemerbroeck 
(de Peste, p. 120, a copy of which Defoe possessed) 
asserts that he personally knew "that in many places 
the sick have chose to lay themselves in fields, in the 
open air, under the slightest coverings," rather than 
submit to the restraint and cruelties of nurses. Mead 
also quoted this passage in his eighth edition of the 
Discourse (p. xviii). In the last-mentioned work 
(p. xxxii) it is related that, during the Plague in Ger- 
many in 1712,-13, three men shut up in Hamburgh 
escaped, took refuge in a barn in the country, where 
they were all found dead, when the barn and corpses 
were burned together. Incidentally, it may be men- 
tioned that this case may have suggested to Defoe the 
story of the soldier, sailor, and joiner. That this was 
the manner in which the disease was scattered broad- 
cast over the kingdom is supported by all the sources. 
Voluntary shutting up was also common, Dr. Burnett 
being a case in point (Pepys, Diary 11 June, 1665). 

Thus far it would appear that Defoe was more 
indebted to Mead than the other way about, — and this 
takes no account of the treatment of the distemper. 
But it is not necessary even to suppose that Defoe 
was, in this instance, a borrower from Dr. Mead 
(although in Due Preparations we know that he did 
use the latter 's work) : we may come nearer home for 

[8] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

a genuine source. In Newes No. 83, there is a letter 
from Durham, dated 13 October, 1665, which reads 
as follows: "The contagion in this country, which 
was brought hither about three months since by cer- 
tain passengers from London and Yarmouth, is now 
by the favour of God very much ass waged : Sunder- 
land (to which place it was first of all brought) being 
now perfectly well, and the other infected places in a 
very hopeful condition. The sick persons are all of 
them removed out of town into huts built in the fields 
at a convenient distance for that purpose." To be 
sure, this does not quite satisfy the case, as here there 
is no suggestion of breaking out of shut up houses ; but 
in the same "newsbook," No. 79, is a letter from Dor- 
chester bearing date of 23 September, 1665, in which it 
was reported that a man escaped from London and 
"died within a mile of this town, after four days' sick- 
ness, and supposed to be of the Plague ; but the hovell 
wherein he lay being boarded over and under, a pit 
was digged, and both hovel and corpse were buried 
together. ' ' One of the most striking proofs of Plague 
victims breaking out of shut-up houses and running 
into the country, occurs in a pamphlet entitled The 
Shutting Up of Infected Houses, etc. (1665), wherein 
it is asserted that sometimes those who are shut up 
break out and * l run as far in City and country as our 
feet can carry us, . . . till at last we drop in some alley, 
field, or neighbour village." As this whole matter 
will be entered into fully elsewhere in this essay, it 
need only be remarked here that the evidence is 
abundant to establish from other sources every item in 

[9] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

the passage in Mead's Discourse which is referred to 
the Journal as authority. 

It is further to be observed that Defoe himself 
tells us in the Journal that " it is much to the satisfac- 
tion of me that write, ... to be able to say that every- 
thing is set down with moderation, and rather within 
compass than beyond it" ; and of the several stories he 
relates he asserts a very truth when he says that there 
are " divers parallel stories to be met with of the same 
kind." The force of this truth will more definitely 
appear in the course of this survey. In like manner, 
in Due Preparations (1722, Introduction, pp. x, xi) he 
assures us that his purpose is to keep near the facts, 
and, moreover, he informs us of his method. "To 
make this discourse familiar and agreeable to every 
reader," he says, "I have endeavoured to make it as 
historical as I could, and have therefore intermingled 
it with some accounts of fact, where I could come at 
them, and some by report, . . . The cases I have stated 
here, are suited with the utmost care to the circum- 
stances past, and more especially as they are reason- 
ably supposed to suit those to come; and as I very 
particularly remember the last visitation of this kind, 
which afflicted this nation in 1665, and have had occa- 
sion to converse with many other persons who lived in 
this city all the while, I have chosen some of their 
cases as precedents for our present instructions. I 
take leave so far to personate the particular persons in 
their histories, as is needful in the case in hand, with- 
out making use of their names, though in many cases 
I could have descended to the very names and par- 
ticulars of the persons themselves." In these two 

[10] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

quotations, the one from the Journal, the other from 
Due Preparations, we are presented with the true ex- 
planation of the purposes and methods in the two 
books respectively : both are based on authentic facts, 
in one case "set down with moderation, and rather 
within compass than beyond it," and in the other, 
"suited with the utmost care to the circumstances 
past, and more especially as they are reasonably sup- 
posed to suit those to come." In other words, Defoe 
took two simple historic facts, the one of a man who 
saved himself and family by shutting themselves up 
before the Plague got into their neighbourhood, the 
other of a family who fled from the distemper, got 
aboard a ship, and thus escaped. Both of these in- 
stances appear in the Journal, intermingled with other 
incidents and episodes of the Plague Year. In Due 
Preparations, Defoe simply isolated these two com- 
mon devices for escaping the Plague and, applying the 
method employed in Robinson Crusoe, elaborated and 
developed them into practical instructions. Due 
Preparations is thus much closer to fiction in method 
and style of narration than is the Journal, for only in 
one instance in the latter is there anything that ap- 
proaches fiction, namely, the story of the soldier, sailor 
and joiner, and even here the several parts of the story 
are quite true; it is only the manner of combining 
them into a coherent narrative that suggests the fic- 
tional element. Other tricks of style and manner em- 
ployed in the Journal that have deceived many into 
the belief that the materials themselves came out of 
Defoe's imagination, I shall discuss more fully in an- 
other section. 

en] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Turning to the second point in Defoe's Introduc- 
tion to Due Preparations, viz., his " personation' ' of 
the characters he mentions therein, the same is true in 
a few cases in the Journal. Whenever the mention of 
an historic name would redound to the credit of the 
original, he did not scruple to use it. Thus, he 
enumerates four famous physicians who braved the 
perils of the Plague and remained in town to assist in 
administering to the poor stricken victims of the in- 
fection. These were Drs. Humphrey Brookes, Fran- 
cis Upton, Nathaniel Hodges, and Peter Barwick, all 
honoured members of the College of Physicians, any 
one, or all, of whom Defoe may have known after he 
reached manhood. 2 On the other hand, when the 
mention of a particular historic character might cause 
offence, 3 or in any way interfere with his narrative, 
Defoe probably made up or borrowed a fictitious 
name; for it should not be forgotten that, as Defoe 
himself informs us, there were many yet alive in 1722 
who could verify and parallel all, and many more, of 
his stories. And is it not a significant fact that in an 
age when every public statement was pounced upon 

2 Defoe might have mentioned many other brave physicians who 

offered themselves to the public service during the Plague, as 
Drs. Dey, Starkey, Grover, O'Dowd, Burnett, Davis, Thompson, 
D'Autry and Boghurst. The first five of these were martyrs 
to the distemper; Dr. William Boghurst recorded his very 
valuable observations in "Loimographia" (1666, but not printed 
until 1894 by the Epedemiological Society, ed. Dr. J. P. Payne) ; 
Dr. Greo. Thompson risked his life to dissect a Plague corpse, 
and recorded the experiment in "Loimotomia, ' ' 1666; Burnett 
was Pepys's doctor, and it was in his house in Fenchurch St. 
that the Plague first appeared in the City about the 10th of 
June. Ten weeks after his servant died of the Plague, Burnett 
himself succumbed to it. This illustrates the odd freaks of the 
disease mentioned by Defoe. Burnett was one of those who 
voluntarily shut himself up. See Pepys, "Diary," June 10, 
11, Aug. 25, 1665. 

3 Strikingly exemplified in the case of the merchant who hanged 

himself in his delirium. 

[12] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

and mauled by every controversialist, no one, not even 
the survivors of 1665, seems to have doubted the au- 
thenticity of the Journal?* This matter of the fic- 
titious names in Defoe's account of the Plague has 
been one of the sure evidences to commentators, of the 
fictitious nature of the Journal. Thus, they can find 
no Dr. Heath on record : ergo, he is a product of De- 
foe 's genius. As a matter of very high probability, 
Dr. Heath was none other than Dr. Hodges, and, for 
the reasons given above, Defoe altered the name to 
Heath. In the hope of finding some clue to the name 
Heath, I sent for Goodall's College of Physicians 
(1684), a copy of which was in Defoe's library at the 
time of his death. I opened the book at random (p. 
393) and by the strangest coincidence the first name 
my eye lighted upon was that of Sir Robert Heath 
(Lord Chief Justice under Charles I) standing out in 
capital letters to catch the eye. Much more to the 
purpose is the fact that the characteristics, including 
the discussions of the treatment of patients, etc., are 
applicable to Dr. Heath and Dr. Hodges alike. Also, 
when it is remembered that the latter is said to have 
suffered the same fate as the man Defoe mentions, 
who, following the doctor's instructions (identical 
with Hodges 's prescription) to ward off the pestilence 
by a copious use of sack, got so addicted to the habit 
that he died a toper, we are able to appreciate the sen- 
timent which moved Defoe to alter the name in the 
Journal. But this is a trivial matter which in no 

* The continuator of Dr. Gideon Harvey's account of the Plague 
under the title of "City Remembrances" (1709) incorporated 
all the leading features of the "Journal," yet no one, I be- 
lieve, has accused him of having been taken in. 

[13] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

sense detracts from the history as such. I take notice 
of it merely to cover the details of the Journal, and to 
indicate Defoe's probable motive in diverting his nar- 
rative from historic facts in matters likely to wound 
the feelings of those still alive when the Journal was 
written. 

Another story that has aroused universal admira- 
tion of Defoe's genius is that of the Quaker, Solomon 
Eagle, who ran about the streets naked, predicting 
doleful things for London and crying, "Oh the great 
and dreadful God!" The only questions to be re- 
solved, concerning this story, are, did people go about 
the streets naked, were Quakers particularly pessimis- 
tic in their prophecies, and was there a genuine his- 
torical character who might have furnished Defoe 
with a prototype? That people did go about naked 
we know from Thucydides, Vincent, and others; but 
they were usually frenzied victims of the pest. As for 
crepe-hanging prophets, they are common in all ages. 
Josephus 's fanatic was one when he ran about wailing, 
"Woe, woe to Jerusalem," before the destruction of 
that city by Titus. But we do not have to resort to 
ancient history or to generalities to account for Solo- 
mon Eagle. There was the flesh-and-blood John Gib- 
son who might have done very well indeed for a model. 
<Ale was a noted Quaker prognosticator of evil things, 
who lived during the middle of the 17th century, and, 
like Solomon Eagle, went about interpreting his "vi- 
sions," preaching his "antient of dayes to come," and 
warning the people of Europe, "but more particularly 
of England." 

[14] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

More nearly parallel to the Solomon Eagle story 
are certain events of Defoe 's own times. The history 
of the troublesome, prophesying Quakers of the 17th 
century and the early part of the 18th century is well 
known to students of the period, and Defoe especially 
had good cause to remember the dissenters of that time 
as one of his satirical pamphlets about them got him 
into serious trouble. 5 It may very well be that he had 
in mind one of these street-preaching prophets when 
he drew his Solomon Eagle. For example, on Janu- 
ary 14, 1701, it is related that, 

"This Day a Man Quaker came to the Royal- 
Exchange, about Exchange time, and took his Post by 
the Effigies of K. Charles 2. where the Spirit mov'd 
him to Express these Words ; ' I am sent by the great 
God, to Proclaim his Summons to this great City; 
That in case the Inhabitants do not speedily Repent of 
their "Wickedness, his Judgments will suddenly fall 
upon them.' " fl 

And again, a fortnight later, the following news item 
appeared in the same paper: 

"London, Jan. 28, 1701. This day about 3 in 
the Afternoon, a Quaker Woman stept up upon a 
great Stone at Fleet-bridge, and made a speech there- 

5 "London, May 23, [1703]. Mr. Daniel de Foe, Author of The 

Shortest Way with the Dissenters, was taken on Thursday last 
[May 20] in a private House in Spittle-Fields." — "Daily 
Courant." May 24, 1703. 
''London, July 31, [1703]. On the 29th Instant Daniel Foe, 
alias de Foe, stood in the Pillory before the Royal Exchange 
in Cornhill, as he did yesterday near the Conduit in Cheap- 
side, and this day at Temple Bar, in pursuance of the Sen- 
tence given against him at the last Session of the Old-Bailey, 
for Writing and Publishing a Seditious Libel, Entituled, The 
Shortest Way with the Dissenters ; By which Sentence he is 
also fined 200 Marks, to find Sureties for his good behaviour 
for 7 years, and to remain in Prison till all be performed." — 
"London Gazette," August 2, 1703. 

6 "London Post," January 15, 1700 (O. S.) 

[15] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

at, denouncing Woe to this City, if the Inhabitants do 
not speedily Repent." 7 

I mention these few eases (which may be multiplied 
at will) to prove the abundance of the materials which 
Defoe might have drawn upon. That a genuine orig- 
inal supplied him with his Solomon Eagle is certain, 
and this is equally true of the story of the Whitechapel 
clergyman who went about repeating the liturgy. 

Of a somewhat different nature is the circum- 
stance related in the Journal of the blind piper, who, 
while overcome with drink, was picked up and thrown 
into the dead cart along with the corpses to be dumped 
into the pit. At first glance the whole thing is so 
bizarre that we are tempted to brand it as fiction of the 
grimmest sort. Yet a little industry rewards us with 
a genuine parallel. In William Austin's Anatomy of 
the Pestilence in 1665 (p. 38), which, by the way, con- 
tains numerous other parallels to the Journal, we read 
in connection with the burial of the dead: 

Wisely they leave graves open to the dead 
'Cause some too early there are brought to bed. 

One out of trance return 'd, after much strife 
Among a troup of dead, exclaims for life. 

Nor need the story related by Defoe of the demented 
man who thought he saw a ghost in Bishopsgate 
Churchyard cause great wonder or admiration. Any 
community in any age will supply many more fetching 
ghost stories than the one reproduced by Defoe. The 

7 "London Post," January 29, 1701. 

[16] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

subject was one that appealed to him, and his own 
library contained any number of examples, to say 
nothing of the wierd stories then, as always, current. 
Besides, hallucination is one of the leading symptoms 
of plague. George Withers, the poet, who won great 
distinction by remaining in London throughout the 
Plague of 1625 and also that of 1665, recorded his ex- 
periences and observations of the former in a large 
tome (in verse) entitled Britain's Remembrancer. In 
this there are literally dozens of parallel descriptions 
and stories to those in the Journal, and in this con- 
nection particularly a man who, in delirium, fancied 
he saw Death prowling about, 

. . . now by the bed, 
He stands, now at the foot, now at the Head. 

He acted with a look so tragical 

That all bystanders might have thought his eyes 

Saw real objects, and no fantasies. 

Then there is the story in the Journal of the man 
who could detect the presence of an infected person by 
the smarting of a wound on his leg, when he would 
rise up, if in company, and say, "Friends, here is 
somebody in the room that has the plague," although 
there were no outward symptoms of it. This looks 
and sounds very much like invention on Defoe's part, 
but it is nothing of the kind, any more than the other 
stories in the Journal accredited to his genius. In a 
letter dated October 12, 1670, J. Beale wrote to the 
Hon. R. Boyle (Works, ed. 1772, VI, 429), that a per- 

[17] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

son "whom for many years I have known to be credit- 
able, [told me] that he knew a good old woman, aged 
near eighty, now deceased, who said often in his 
hearing, that she could know, if the plague were 
within thirty miles of her, by a pain she had in three 
plague sores, which sores she had in her younger days, 
before she was married." Certainly in this instance 
Defoe kept rather "within compass than beyond it." 
And here it should be observed that Defoe has been 
criticised for asserting that plague victims went about 
with the infection upon them, yet not be aware of it 
themselves "till they had the very tokens come out 
upon them, . . . and would die in an hour or two after 
they came home, but be well as long as they were 
abroad." This criticism (and, indeed, most of the 
criticism of the Journal, is based entirely on probabil- 
ity. An examination of the sources again justifies 
Defoe's claim to "moderation." On September 20, 
1665, John Allin (preacher-chemist-astrologer), who 
remained in London throughout the Plague, wrote to 
his friend, Philip Fryth: "If the infection be received 
by the halitus, or breath, it now immediately afflicts 
the hearte, y e root of the vitall spirits, and some time 
kills before any external and generally believed symp- ' 
tomes of that distemper can appeare, either spotts or 
tumors, but allways invades y e party with sudden and 
sharpe fainting fitts." 8 Kemp gives testimony to the 
same effect when he quotes Benedictus as authority for 
the statement that plague victims sometimes "whilst 
they have been employed about their business in the 
house, their trading in the market, their devotions in 

8 "Archaelogia," XXXVII, 12. 

[18] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

the church, have died suddenly, and sundry other 
physicians relate the like, and perhaps hath or might 
have been observed at London." 9 The same author 
also gives his testimony that ' ' as the Plague is propa- 
gated by contagion, so likewise it is spread by fear and 
imagination. . . . There be stories that make the rela 
tion of some that did but see one infected with the 
Plague, and of some that did but behold afar off a 
corpse going to be buried ; of others, who being in the 
house, did not hear the buriers, and presently after 
have sought the sickness, and died of the Plague them* 
selves." 10 Hodges, Vincent, and many others bear 
witness to this fact which recurs a number of times 
in the Journal, 

The various stories of infected persons breaking 
out while insane from their sufferings, and often doing 
violence upon themselves or others, are all quite true 
and will be considered presently. The story of the 
waterman who was compelled to ply his vocation in 
order to earn a livelihood for his wife and child, 
though afraid to go near them for fear of carrying 
the distemper to them, and so deposited his earnings 
on a large stone where they might come out and get 
them, has the ring of reality about it. In like man- 
ner, Dr. Symon Patrick's clerk removed himself from 
his family, although in his case he did it to protect 
himself from those of his household who were 
visited. 11 It is only in the story of the three friends 
who escaped into the country and lived in a tent that 
Defoe abandons himself to the methods of fiction ; but, 

9 Kemp. "Brief Treatise," p. 3. 

10 lb. p. 22. 

11 Add. MSS., 5810. 

[19] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

as already pointed out, all the details of the story es- 
sential to the history of the Plague are in accord with 
known facts : people did escape and live in tents and 
huts, and the country folk were chary of them. 

The feature of the history of the Plague relating 
to the breaking out of victims from shut-up houses, 
and in some cases the escape of people before their 
houses were shut up, they running into the country 
with the infection upon them, thus polluting places 
hitherto free from the contagion, occupies a most im- 
portant place in the Journal, involving at least one- 
seventh of its entire contents, albeit there are many 
useless repetitions. The arguments for and against 
shutting up were taken by Defoe directly from 
Hodges 's "Historical Account of the Plague of 
1665;" and other sources are numerous. So, also, the 
stories repeated by Defoe to illustrate the plain facts 
have numerous origins and parallels. Some of these 
have already been mentioned in other connections. 
The author of Shutting Up Infected Houses as it is 
practised in England (1665) gives us an appalling ac- 
count of the evils arising from shutting up. "As soon 
as we find ourselves or any member of our families in- 
fected," he says, "so dreadful is it to us to be shut up 
from all comfort and society, from free and wholesome 
air, from the care of the physician and divine, from 
the oversight of friends and relations, and sometimes 
from the very necessities and conveniences of nature, 
that we run as far in city and country as our feet can 
carry us, leaving wives and children to the parishes, 
empty walls and shops to creditors, scattering the in- 
fection along the streets as we go, and shifting it from 

[20] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

lodging to lodging with ourselves, till at last we drop 
in some alley, field or neighbour village, calling the 
people round about by the suddenness of our fall to 
stand awhile astonished at our deaths, and then take 
their own ; each fearful man of us frighted from his 
own house, killing his own town by surprising them 
unprepared. . . . 

1 ' See, see, we infect not our next neighbours, and 
this sickness spreads not much in any one place, but 
we carry it from place to place, running from our 
homes as from places of torment, and thus the roads 
are visited, and men travel the same way to the coun- 
try, and to their long home. Thus the contagion hath 
reached most places round the city, which is now as it 
were besieged with the judgment, and encompassed 
with the visitation and desolation." And the author 
of Golgotha (p. 12) says of the evil of shutting up that 
"many for fear thereof do hide their sores, and, after 
a sweat or two, their sickness also, and go daily about 
their business as long as they can stand, mingled to 
much more danger every way. Nor dare any do the 
office of a nurse or friend to those shut up . . . because 
it is so penal that they must be inclosed then them- 
selves. ' ' 

It was in the manner of the foregoing examples 
that Islington received the infection, as related by 
Defoe in the story of the man who died at the "Pied 
Bull/' Leafing over the "newsbooks" of 1665, we 
find any number of similar stories. To take one in- 
stance, in a letter from Portsmouth, dated September 
3, 1665, we are informed that the Plague had got 
over to Newport — isolated as that town was— 

[21] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

"brought over by a certain knight who had an estate 
there, and sickened and died at his lodgings ; the mas- 
ter of the house thought it quinsy, and threatened the 
mayor for shutting up the house, but two women took 
the infection, and died from merely changing and air- 
ing the sheets of the bed; the poor gentleman was 
obliged to bury the bodies himself in his own garden • 
sheep and goats since put in the house are all dead." 
Again, in a letter from Coventry, October 15, 1665, we 
read: "We were very much afraid of the sickness at 
Litchfield, and it is true that a disorderly fellow enter- 
tained an infected person in an ale-house in the sub- 
urbs: whereupon the master of the house died." In 
Defoe's story it was the maid who showed the traveler 
to his room who "fell presently ill." But the 
resemblances between all these stories are so unmis- 
takable that historical accuracy is assured. Well 
might the country places be suspicious of people from 
London ! 

At the outbreak of the Plague, as related by the 
contemporaries, and repeated by Defoe, only, or 
mainly, those who were financially able to run away 
from the distemper left town ; but as the enormity of 
the disease became more and more apparent, those 
who had at first hesitated to go, got away whenever 
possible. By this time the Plague was approaching 
its height, and hence travelers from London were the 
more feared. The country magistrates were put to 
their wits' ends to prevent strangers entering their 
precincts. Commercial interests, however, and 
forged certificates of health made it possible for many 
to go from place to place ; and the mere desperation of 

[22] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

shut-up victims, as related by the author of Shutting 
up, made it impossible to guard successfully against 
the ultimate spread of the disease. Nevertheless, the 
whole country was so alarmed, the vigilance of the 
authorities so alert, that a fairly rigid quarantine was 
established in most places until after the Plague ap- 
proached its climax in London. The experience of De- 
foe 5 s three heroes is typical of what happened to most 
travelers during that frightful year. By the end of 
June, 1665, every one knew that the Plague was rap- 
idly getting beyond control, and those who were able to 
do so had left town or were preparing to leave. Pepys 's 
entry for June 29 depicts the situation very tersely: 
1 ' Up and by water to White Hall, where the Court full 
of waggons and people ready to go out of towne. . . . 
This end of the towne grows every day very bad of 
the plague. The Mortality Bill has come to 267. " 
The "great orbs," as Vincent calls the aristocracy, 
went first of course, — many even long before the Court 
fled, for it was not until July 2 that Charles II and 
his retinue went to Hampton Court (the Queen 
Mother left for France on June 26) ; but the general 
exodus had begun before the middle of June, and a 
few had taken the alarm and gone when the Bills end- 
ing June 6 showed an increase from 17 to 43 of the 
Plague; and when, the following week, 112 deaths 
from the distemper were reported, the real panic be- 
gan, as recorded by Defoe. This was reflected the fol- 
lowing day (June 14) when a royal Proclamation was 
issued forbidding the holding of the annual Fair 
at Barnwell, near Cambridge, — the first of many simi- 
lar prohibitions. The country towns at once began 

[23] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

to erect barriers against travelers from the metropolis : 
a clean bill of health was required of all strangers, 
especially from London, but, as already observed, this 
means of protection had to be abandoned soon for 
more drastic methods. 12 Among the first towns to 
take due precautions was (by the irony of fate, as it 
was later most heavily visited) Ipswich. On July 11, 
1665, its correspondent to the Newes (No. 54) re- 
ported that the place was in good health, ' ' and there 
is great care and industry used to keep it so, no 
stranger being permitted to enter without examina- 
tions and good Certificates." The officials of Ipswich 
did not then know how easy it was to secure "good 
Certificates. ' ' 

The precautions taken by the Guildford authori- 
ties are worth repeating as they are fairly representa- 
tive of the action taken by most of the country towns 
to prevent the Plague from visiting them: "As it hath 
pleased God hitherto to preserve this place and the 
neighbourhood in a happy condition of health ; so it is 
the singular care of the magistrates to provide (as 
much as may be) for the continuance thereof ; to which 
end Justices of the Peace of County of Surrey have di- 
rected an Order of Sessions, bearing date the 11th, 
instant, [July, 1665] , to the lord of the Manor of Ebis- 
ham, desiring him to cause the wells to be locked up 

12 "Whereas several Certificates have been made by others as from 
the Officers of St. Gregory's Parish by St. Paul's, London: 
This is to notify that the Officers of the said Parish will not 
certify any to be clear of the Plague but whom they know, and 
that from the 8th of this instant [July 1665], they will sub- 
scribe to no Certificates but what are printed." — "Intelli- 
gencer," No. 53 — There are many other advertisements like 
this one, and they all clearly indicate that forged certificates 
were common. Unfortunately, the deceit was not discovered in 
time, and it may easily be understood how suspicious the magis- 
trates became, even of those bearing certificates. The story 
of Defoe's three heroes should be read in this light. 

[24] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

during these infectious times, and to secure the same 
by a constant watch, for fear of any resort thither 
from infectious places: which said Order was upon 
Monday last put into execution, with a restraint upon 
the inhabitants, neither to receive any lodgers into 
their houses, nor to admit any coaches or waggons 
with goods or passengers from infected places. Which 
Order was not resolved upon without great reluctancy, 
considering the damages of particulars which must 
necessarily attend it." 13 Vincent, in God's Terrible 
Voice in the City, calls attention to the quarantine 
established in the country towns: "Now the countries 
[i, e. country towns] keep guards, lest infectious per- 
sons from the City bring the disease unto them ; ' ' and 
the Sancroft Correspondence (November 2, 1665) 
speaks of the "unkindnesse of country people to Lon- 
doners. ' ' On July 17, Pepys comments, "Lord ! to see 
how all these great people here [at Dagnams, near 
Romford] are afeard of London, being doubtful of 
anything that comes from thence, or that has lately 
been there, that I was forced to say that I lived wholly 
at Woolwich. ' ' On September 3, he was obliged to go 
to Greenwich on business connected with the Ad- 
miralty, ' ' where much ado to be suffered to come into 
the towne, till I told them who I was. " A week earlier 
he recorded that it was ' t an unpleasing thing to be at 
Court [then at Hampton Court], everybody being 
fearful one of another, and all so sad, enquiring after 
the Plague." 

In an effort to assist the country towns to make 
their restrictions more effective, the King on August 

13 "Intelligencer," No. 57. 

[25] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

10, 1665, sent a command to the Middlesex Justices to 
use diligence in preventing the removal of persons or 
goods from London and suburbs to other towns ; and 
likewise to suppress the practice of infected persons 
breaking out of shut-up houses. Searchers, nurses, 
etc., were to be appointed in the towns in the Magis- 
trates' jurisdiction, and no lodger or tenant was to 
be admitted without the permission of two Justices of 
the Peace. The part played by high Church officials 
in preventing the spread of the distemper is also 
worthy of note. Thus, to mention only one example, 
the Bishop of Ely temporarily nullified the patent 
for holding the annual Fair at Ely, for fear of "a 
great resort from London, Yarmouth, Colchester, 
Cambridge, and other places/' 14 

Despite all efforts to prevent the spread of the 
disease (in London by means of shutting up infected 
houses, in the country by orders regulating travel and 
traffic), the Plague finally got to almost every part of 
England. 15 Defoe has faithfully recorded how this 
came about, namely, by infected persons bribing the 
watchmen or otherwise escaping from shut-up houses, 
and by others getting away before the infection was 
discovered upon them, and before their houses were 
shut up. Defoe's three travelers were free from the 
distemper, it is true ; but the reverse was as apt to be 
the case. Pepys (Diary, September 3, 1665) gives us 

14 "Intelligencer," No. 78. 

15 Scotland, which had been visited in a most frightful manner in 

former plague years, forbade (July 12, 1665) all persons from 
England to enter her borders, on penalty of the loss of life and 
goods, unless "they bring sufficient passes and testimonials with 
them, under the hands and seals of the Major and Aldermen." 
"Newes," No. 58. No ,/onder Defoe remarked that he did not 
know "how it fared with Scotland," — there was no plague news 
from Scotland. 

[26] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

a graphic picture of an evasion of the shutting up and 
guarding order. " Among other stories," he says, 
"one was very passionate, me thought, of a complaint 
brought against a man in the towne [of Greenwich] 
for taking a child from London from an infected 
house. Alderman Hooker told me it was the child of 
a very able citizen in Gracious Street, a saddler, who 
had buried all the rest of his children of the plague, 
and himself and wife now being shut up, and in 
despair of escaping, did desire only to save the life of 
this little child; and so prevailed to have it received 
stark-naked into the arms of a friend, who brought it 
(having put it into new fresh clothes) to Greenwich; 
whereupon hearing the story, we did agree it should 
be permitted to be received and left in the towne." 

The frenzy of shut-up victims, when the fever was 
at its height, causing them to do violence upon them- 
selves or others, made a strong appeal to Defoe, as to 
all students of the Plague. One thus crazed, men- 
tioned in the Journal, broke out of his bed, ran naked 
through the streets to the Thames, plunged in, swam 
across and back, and was soon after a well man. 
Thucydides likewise records that those visited with 
the distemper could not endure clothing upon them, 
and that nothing pleased them so much as to plunge 
into water. Add to this statement of Thucydides the 
debate over the cold water cure, and we have Defoe's 
story ; and note here too, as so often in the Journal, its 
author does not vouch for the truthfulness of the 
story. Another instance of a similar nature is of one 
who, "in or about Whitecross Street burned himself 
to death in his bed. " As this was taken directly from 

[27] . 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City (which also 
furnished numerous other facts for the Journal), it 
was not necessary to warn the reader that it might not 
be authentic, — Defoe got it from undoubted authority. 
Of violence upon others, when the infected were de- 
lirious, examples are only too numerous. The author 
of Shutting up Infected Houses relates that in their 
paroxysms of pain the sick ' ' are ready to commit any 
violence, either upon themselves or others, whether 
wife, mother, or child," and, by the method adopted 
by Defoe, cites a specific example "last week in Fleet 
Lane, where the man of the house being sick, and hav- 
ing a great swelling, . . . did in a strong fit rise out of 
his bed, in spight of all that his wife (who attended 
him) could do to the contrary, got his knife and most 
miserably cut his wife, and had killed her, had she not 
wrapped up the sheet about her, and therewith saved 
herself, till by crying out Murther, a neighbour . . . 
came seasonably to her preservation. The man is 
since dead." 

Of the mournful stories and descriptions in the 
Journal, one enthusiastic editor exclaims in admira- 
tion, "Nothing could be more tragic," etc., — as if 
Defoe's imagination were the author of the tragedy! 
A few brief glances through the account just quoted 
from, or at the pages of Withers, Austin, Hodges, Vin- 
cent, and others, would reveal not only more tragical 
scenes, but more pathetic and more graphic, than those 
in the Journal. Take, for example, this vivid descrip- 
tion of the horrors of the Plague : 16 

16 George Withers, "Britain's Remembrancer," fol. 105. That this 
refers to the Plague of 1625 makes nothing against it as evi- 
dence, — the histories of all plagues are filled with identical 

[28] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Here, one man stagger 'd by with visage pale ; 
There, lean'd another grunting on a stall; 
A third, half dead, lay gasping for his grave ; 
A fourth did out of window call and rave ; 
Yon, came the bearers sweating from the Pit, 
To fetch more bodies to replenish it. 
A little further off, one sits and shows 
The spots, which he death's tokens doth suppose; 

Yea, the terror 
Occasioned by their fond and common error, 
Who tell the sick that markt for death they be, 
(When those blue spots upon their flesh they see) 
Even that hath murthered thousands who might here 
Have lived, else, among us, many a year. 

And there is nothing in Defoe's narrative that for an 
instant can be compared with the following extract 
from God's Terrible Voice : "In August . . . the people 
fell as thick as leaves from the trees in Autumn, . . . 
and there is a dismal solitude in London streets. . . . 
Now shops are shut in, people rare and very few that 
walk about, insomuch that grass begins to spring up 
in some places, especially within the Walls ; no rattling 
coaches, no prancing horses, no calling in customers, 
no offering wares, no London cries sounding in the 
ears; if any voice be heard it is the groans of dying 

horrors. It will be observed that Withers speaks of people 
dying of fright; practically all the sources agree on this point, — 
Hodges, Vincent, Kemp, "J. V.," Boghurst, etc. On August 
9, 1665, Pepys wrote in his "Diary": "An odd story of Al- 
derman Bunce's stumbling over a dead corpse in the streets, 
and going home and telling his wife, she at the fright, being 
with child, fell sick and died of the plague." Defoe had 
ample authority for a similar story. 

[29] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

persons breathing forth their last; and the funeral 
knells of them that are ready to be carried to their 
graves. Now shutting up of visited houses, there be- 
ing so many, is at an end, and most of the well are 
mingled among the sick, which otherwise would have 
got no help. Now in some places where the people did 
generally stay, not one house in an hundred but is in- 
fected, and in many houses half the family is swept 
away, — in some the whole. . . . Now the nights are 
too short to bury the dead, the whole day (though at so 
great a length) is hardly sufficient to light the dead 
that fall therein into their beds. 

"Now, we could hardly go forth, but we should 
meet many coffins, and see many with sores and limp- 
ing in the streets; amongst other sad spectacles, me- 
thought two were very affecting : one of a woman com- 
ing alone and weeping by the door wliere I lived 
(which was in the midst of the infection) with a little 
coffin under her arm, carrying it to the new church- 
yard. I did judge it was the mother of the child, and 
that all the family besides was dead, and she was 
forced to coffin up and bury with her own hands this 
her last dead child." The other story related by 
Vincent is that of a plague victim who was seized with 
a fit near the Artillery Wall against which he dashed 
his head, "and when I came by he lay hanging with 
his bloody face over the rails, and bleeding upon the 
ground. As I came back he was removed under a tree 
in Moore-fields and lay upon his back; I went and 
spake to him ; he could make me no answer, but rattled 
in his throat, and, as I was informed, within half an 
hour died in the place." It will be necessary to 

[30] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

mention Vincent again, but from this brief 
quotation it will at onee be apparent that not only 
did Defoe borrow from him liberally of material 
and style (c/. whole families and whole streets 
swept away, grass growing in the streets, sad 
sights of victims limping about, etc.), but also how 
far short the later writer fell in emulating his source. 
There is nothing in the Journal that approaches the 
delineations of the genuine eye-witness, as to tragic 
pathos and graphic portrayal. Even the very excla- 
mations of compassion, intended by Defoe to arouse 
pity, are taken directly over by him from the sources, 
which supplied him with his materials also. Not only 
so, but these exclamations occur invariably in the ex- 
act connections where they appear in the originals. 
Thus, "it would wound the soul of any Christian to 
have heard " the penitent groans of sinners — which 
occurs three times in the Journal — was borrowed from 
Vincent (op. cit. p. 25). So, also, "it often pierced 
my very soul to hear the groans and cries," "it was 
indeed a lamentable thing to hear the lamentations of 
poor dying creatures, ' ' or, " it would make the stoutest 
heart bleed to hear," etc., or, "it would make the hard- 
est heart move," etc., or, "it was enough to place hor- 
ror on the stoutest heart in the world, ' ' are no more a 
part of Defoe 's lauded piety than are the other mythi- 
cal attributes with which he has been invested by 
vapouring admirers. These are nothing but para- 
phrases of the common pious expressions of contem- 
poraneous writers on the Plague. Compare, for ex- 
ample, one of Defoe's main sources, Hodges 's Loimo- 
logia: "Who can express the calamities of such times 1 

[31] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

The whole British Nation wept." Again, "Who 
would not burst with grief/' etc., or, "even the rela- 
tion of this calamity melts me into tears." George 
Withers (op. cit, 70) has a like expiration in, 

Ah me ! what tongue can tell the many woes, 
What mortal pen is able to express, etc. 

And Evelyn, who like Withers remained in London 
during the Plague of 1665, exclaims, "My very heart 
turns within me at the contemplation of our calam- 
ity." 17 To take still another example, on September 
14, 1665, J. Tillison wrote to Dean Sancroft, "y* 
heart is either steel or stone y* will not lament for this 
sad visitation, & will not bleed for these vnutterable 
sorrowes;" and again in the same epistle, "What ey: 
would not weep," etc. That the last two quotations 
could not have been known to Defoe only serves to 
emphasize his unoriginality in his expression of a 
pious horror : such expressions were the fashion of the 
time. And the same may be said of the religious 
element which crops out here and there in the Journal, 
its expression was borrowed along with the rest. To 
take a case in point, his "divine meditations" and his 
sermon on blasphemy may have been suggested by or 
supplied from, any number of sources, as Withers 's 
Britain's Remembrancer, Patrick's An Exhortation, 
etc., or the latter 's numerous meditations and ser- 
mons which were very popular in Defoe's time (more 
than one hundred of them being in print in 1722, sev- 
eral of which Defoe had in his own library), and Vin- 

17 "Memoirs and Correspondence," ed. 1818, II, 212. 

[32] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

cent's God's Terrible Voice and, particularly, his ser- 
mon preached on the occasion of the funeral of Abra- 
ham Janaway, Sept. 18, 1665. Not even the oft- 
repeated "dismal objects/' "dismal scenes," "dismal 
time," etc., are original with Defoe, but are copied by 
him from Vincent's "dismal solitude," Hodges 's 
"dismal prospect," etc. Defoe's "Scarce a day or 
night passed over but some dismal thing or other 
happened," appears in Vincent as, "Scarcely a day 
passed over my head for I think a month or more to- 
gether, but I should hear the death of some one or 
more that I knew." In both cases, the expressions 
follow immediately after the story of the man who 
burnt himself to death in bed. The little mannerisms, 
"I say," "As I said before," "If I may give my 
opinion," etc. are likewise reflections from the 
originals. "I say," was a particular favourite with 
Boccaccio (cf. 1st Day of Decameron). Indeed, the 
resemblance between Defoe's expressions and those of 
his sources are so marked as to lead to the conclusion 
that not only did he copy facts, but also the very 
language, from the originals. Even his opinions re- 
specting the care and treatment of the plague-seized, 
the prevention of the disease spreading, questions of 
quarantine, public fires, fumigation, etc., so gener- 
ously made a part of Defoe's originality by com- 
mentators, are borrowed from his sources. Thus, the 
argument for the spread of the distemper by con- 
tagion came from Hodges and his followers, as did the 
pro and con discussions of shutting up, the efficacy of 
fires in the streets, etc. The numerous medical 

[33] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

treatises on the distemper from Diemerbroeck to Mead 
and Quincy furnished Defoe materials of that nature. 
In a few instances, Defoe parts, or partially parts, 
company from his sources. An example of this is the 
case of wicked nurses. Almost without an exception 
the authorities who mention the subject agree that 
nurses often hastened the death of their patients by 
poisoning, smothering, or otherwise bringing about 
their end, with the purpose of robbing the dead. De- 
foe, true to his task, repeats their evidence, but doubts 
there was "more of tale than truth in those things.' ' 
While his dissent is purely gratuitous, it in no sense 
confuses the record of fact. The stories of robberies 
alleged to have been committed by the nurses, after the 
members of a plague-stricken family were all dead, 
even to the taking of the linen from the bed and the 
clothes from the corpses, he accepts without question, 
but, oddly enough, similar stories related of the 
buriers he " cannot easily credit anything so vile 
among Christians. " Nevertheless, he relates the 
stories, — the main thing so far as history is concerned. 
Both as regards the wicked nurses and the dishonest 
buriers there is abundant of evidence, though, natur- 
ally, more against the criminal nurses, as they had the 
first opportunity to rob the dead. On this point, Dr, 
Hodges 's testimony is beyond dispute. "These 
wretches, out of greediness to plunder the dead," he 
says (Loimologia, ed. 1720, p. 8) "would strangle 
their patients, and charge it to the distemper in their 
throats; others would secretly convey the pestilential 
taint from sores of the infected to those who were 
well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned 

[34] 



OF THE PLAQUE YEAR 

miscreants from prosecuting their avaricious purposes 
by all the methods their wickedness could invent. . . . 
One amongst many, as she was leaving the house of a 
family, all dead, loaded with her robberies, fell down 
dead under her burden in the streets. And the case 
of a worthy citizen was very remarkable, who being 
suspected dying by his nurse, was beforehand stripped 
by her; but recovering again, he came a second time 
into the world naked.' ' Austin corroborates all this 
in his Anatomy of the Pestilence (1665) : 

Hell [t. e. the patient] ne'er give out she killed him, 

for 'tis said, 
He 's to be always silent when he 's dead. 
And while he lives, nurses hell never curse, 
Knowing few good, most bad, and many worse. 

That many searchers were dishonest, we learn from 
the same historian, who likewise furnishes us with 
further evidence that some were robbed before they 
were dead, and of the winding sheet afterwards. 

Those there [at the grave] we thought bid us their last 

adieu, 
Before they can repent are born anew. 
They, walking, speak, thinking they may be bold, 
Wanting their clothes, to say they are a-cold. 

And again, with fine irony, 

One too too weak to raise his aking head, 

Throws off the sheet when friends have sold his bed. 

And so on, in half-a-dozen similar examples. 

[35] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Vincent supports this testimony when he says 
that, after the order for shutting up of houses had 
been issued, and the inscription, Lord have mercy 
upon us, set over the door, none was suffered to come 
to the pent-up victims "but a nurse, whom they have 
been more afraid of than the Plague itself. ' ' 

But it is the vitriolic pen of the author of Shut- 
ting up Infected Houses that depicts the nurses of 
1665 in the blackest shade. "Little is it conceived," 
he writes, "how careless most nurses are in attending 
the visited, and how careful (being possessed with 
rooking avarice) they are to watch their opportunity 
to ransack their houses ; the assured absence of friends 
making the sick desperate on the one hand, and them 
on the other unfaithful: their estates are the Plague 
most die on, if they have anything to lose, to be sure 
those sad creatures (for the nurses in such cases are 
the off-scouring of the City) have a dose to give them; 
besides that it is something beyond a Plague to an in- 
genious spirit to be in the hands of those dirty, ugly, 
and unwholesome hags; even a hell itself, on the one 
hand to hear nothing but screetches, cries, groans, and 
on the other to see nothing but ugliness and deformity, 
black as night, and dark as Melancholy : Ah ! to lie at 
the mercy of a strange woman is sad; to leave wife, 
children, plate, jewels, to the ingenuity of poverty is 
worse; but who can express the misery of being ex- 
posed to their rapine that have nothing of the woman 
left but shape?" 18 

18 One of the stories (essentials taken from Hodges) which Defoe 
relates is of a nurse who smothered a victim by ' 'laying a wet 
double clout" on his face. The language adopted in telling this 
seems to have been suggested by the 2nd Book of Kings, viii, 15: 
"And it came to pass on the morrow, that he took a thick 

[36]. 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Another minor divergence between Defoe and 
his sources is found in the question of the alleged 
pleasure, or at least gross carelessness, which infected 
persons manifested in consciously infecting others. 
But here again, all the authorities are against him. 
Defoe repeats the assertion (with his denial) a num- 
ber of times in the Journal, and also gives arguments 
(taken straight from Hodges 's Loimologia, p. 10, and 
Mead's Short Discourse, 8th ed., p. xvii) for this cruel 
perversity of human nature. In support of the fact, 
as related in the works mentioned, we read in Pepys's 
Diary for February 12, 1666 : "Comes Mr. Caesar, my 
boy's lute-master, whom I have not seen since the 
plague before. ... He tells me in the height of it, 
how bold people there were, to go in sport to one an- 
other's burials; and in spite too, ill people would 
breathe in the face ... of well people." On August 
22, 1665, he laments that the Plague "makes us more 
cruel to one another than if we are doggs ; ' ' and again 
to the same effect on September 4 following. Defoe's 
own faithful record (corroborated by Pepys, the 
"newsbooks" and others) that people persisted in 
crowding to burials, and so spread the infection, 
should have corrected his "opinion" to a large degree, 
for such gatherings were due to sheer morbidity and a 
dogged perversity. 19 But here, once more, we are 

cloth and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that 
he died." The practice of smothering was a common one, by 
report, in 1665. 

In most of the quotations which I have given to illustrate a single 
point, other parallels to the "Journal" will at once suggest 
themselves. 
19 In "Newes" No. 71 (August 29, 1665), L'Estrange thus com- 
plains: "The late encrease of the sickness in and about this 
town (beside that the Judgement is in itself just and dreadful) 
has been undoubtedly promoted by the incorrigible license of 
the multitudes that resort to publick funerals, contrary both 

[37] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

supplied with the historical account and are distinctly 
told that the narrator is merely expressing an opin- 
ion, — a legitimate license practised by all historians, 
some of whom, indeed, unlike Defoe, often substitute 
opinion for fact. It is Defoe's very frankness which 
has caused him to be suspect. 

Another point on which Defoe numerously ex- 
presses an opinion is in regard to the inaccuracies of 
the Bills of Mortality, as officially reported every 
week. In this he is only following the unani- 
mous judgment of contemporary authorities. Thus, 
Hodges (op. cit., 28) gives the estimated total of 
deaths from the Plague in 1665 as being over 100,000 
(the Bills reported only 68,596). Defoe accepts 
Hodges 's estimate (without naming the authority) as 
low enough. Also, like Hodges, Boghurst, and others, 
he points out the probability that victims of the 
Plague were often reported as having died of other 
diseases. Commenting on the discrepancies in the re- 
turns by the Parish Clerks, the author of Reflections 
cm the Weekly Bills of Mortality (1665) observes that 
' ' there lyeth an error in the accounts or distinctions of 
casualities, that is, more died of the Plague than were 
accounted for under that name, as many as one to 
four, there being a fourth part more dead of other 
casualities in Plague years than the years preceding 

to order and reason." And Pepys "Diary," September 3, 
1665: "Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the 
town, who will (because they are forbid) come in crowds along 
with the dead corpses to see them buried." Again, three days 
later, he "saw in broad daylight two or three burials upon the 
Bankside, one at the very heels of another; and yet forty or 
fifty going along with every one of them." It will be remem- 
bered, also, that Pepys, just as Defoe's sadler, could not resist 
the temptation to prowl about to see how the Plague was pro- 
gressing, even to going to burials. Cf. "Diary," August 30, 
1665. 

[38] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

or subsequent : whence we may collect a good rule, viz. 
That whereas it is doubted we have not a true account 
of the number that died ... of the Plague, the poor 
searchers, out of ignorance, respect, love of money, 
or malice, returning, it's suspected, more or less as 
they are inclined; we may discern the truth, by com- 
paring the number that died of other diseases, and the 
casualties the weeks immediately before the Plague 
begun, and the numbers reported to have been dead 
every week of those diseases and casualities since, and 
observing that the surplusage that die now above what 
did then of those diseases, are indeed dead of the 
Plague, though returned under the notion of those 
other diseases." Writing on August 24, 1665, John 
Allin (Archaelogia, xxxvii, 6) reported 4,257 dead of 
the Plague for that week, "but rather in verity 5,000, 
though not so many in y e bill of the Plague." This 
estimated discrepancy is less than that of John 
Graunt's, just quoted. On the other hand, Clarendon 
(Continuation of the Life of), with his usual inaccu- 
racy avers that the Bills returned ' * above one hundred 
and three score thousand persons : and many who could 
compute very well concluded that there were in truth 
double that number who died; and that in one week, 
when the Bill mentioned only six thousand, there had 
in truth over fourteen thousand died." It may be 
stated, not in support of these exaggerations, but as 
a matter of contemporaneous opinion, that as many 
as eight thousand or ten thousand died in one week in 
September, when the Plague was at its height. 20 Of 
far greater value in Clarendon's account are the ex^ 

20 See "Loimologia," 16; Pepys, August 31, 1665; Evelyn, Sep- 
tember 7, 1665. 

[39] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

planations he gives for the misrepresentations in the 
Bills. "The frequent deaths of the Clerks and Sex- 
tons of Parishes," he continues, "hindered the exact 
account of every week ; but that which left it without 
any certainty was the vast number that was buried in 
the fields, of which no account was kept. Then of the 
Anabaptists and other sectaries who abounded in the 
City, very few left their habitations; and multitude* 
of them died, whereof no church-warden or other of- 
ficer had notice; but they found burials according to 
their own fancies, in their own gardens or the next 
fields." Of this class, though not mentioned by 
Clarendon, were the Quakers, who refused to have the 
bell rung for their dead whom they buried without 
making report of the fact to the Parish Clerk. 21 It is 
also pretty evident that the authorities "doctored" 
the Bills before they were published. As an example 
of this, Pepys records a detail in point (Dairy, August 
30, 1665) : "Up betimes . . . and abroad and met with 
Hadley, our clerke, who, upon my asking how the 
plague goes, he told me it encreases much, and much in 
our parish [St. Olave, Hart St.] ; for, says he, there 
died nine this week, though I have returned but six : 
which is a very ill practice, and makes me think it is 
so in other places, and therefore the plague much 
greater than people take it to be." More particularly 
in a letter dated December 5, 1665, from Dr. Symon 
Patrick to Mrs. Elizabeth Gauden, we are told that 
"the just number [of dead] they [i. e. the clerks] 

31 On September 14, 1665, J. Tillison wrote to Dean Sancroft : "The 
Quakers (as we are informed) have curved in their peece 1000 
for some weekes together last past, ... & many other places 
about ye town are not included in ye bill of Mortality." Cf. 
Pepys, August 31, 1665. 

[40] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

would not declare, because the Lord Mayor must have 
it first : I heard lately that he imprisoned one of the 
officers because they spread abroad the account before 
they came to him: which indeed was unhandsome." 22 
Once again, Defoe recorded the facts "within com- 
pass." 

The great fascination of the Journal is not in the 
isolated stories used to illustrate a given phase or stage 
of the Plague — such as those I have dealt with thus far 
— but more particularly in the constant impressing 
upon the reader the general desolation of the town, — 
empty streets with grass growing therein, lack of 
trade, shut-up shops, doleful appearance of the people 
one met with, some full of sores, and all afraid of one 
another, the rumbling of the dead cart, the bell always 
tolling, and the ever ceasless ' ' Bring out your dead ! ' ' 
dinging mortality into the very soul. Of such in- 
stances, the duplicate sources are so numerous that 
only a few may be mentioned here. Hodges, Vincent, 
and other originals who certainly supplied Defoe with 
the bulk of his materials which he used to illustrate 
the pathetic side of the Plague, I shall reserve for an- 
other place, and reproduce here only extracts from 
parallel sources, some of which Defoe could have 
known nothing. As people began thoroughly to 
realize the horrors of the distemper, Austin {Anat- 
omy, p. 8, et sq.) describes them, 

So timorously they talk, look pale, and stare, 
As'if they had been frighted by the air. 

22 Add. MSS., 5,810. 

[41] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

The same historian records that the Inns of Court 
were closed, shops were shut up, and the Court left 
town, — 

The only thriving trade one can tell here 
Lives by the dead (as hangmen), — coffin-seller; 
• •••••••• 

At ev'ry door stand marshall'd in array 

Biers, as green boughs are planted there in May. 

People kept to the middle of the street, the sight of an 
infected house aroused horror, the town was so forlorn 
that, 

Did Caesar now enter our City gate, 
His prize would make him think h'had found 
a cheat. 

Of the great pit and the numerous burials, 

|f i J ; j 

Many attend them to the graves are taught 
How to come there next day ; so then are brought. 

In this, the grave's great Jubilee, we choose 
No place but church-yard for our rendezvous. 

The awful carnage, the pest stalking about everywhere 
— in the market, in the bread sent to preserve life, on 
the breath of a friend or relative, in the very letter 
wishing "long life and perfect health;" 

And to speak our condition at the best, 
Our City's merely but great house of pest. 

[42] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Withers depicts similar scenes and conditions, and 
many more, too long and too numerous to quote. 

Death lurk't at ev'ry angle of the street, 

And, 

In sundry families there was not one 
Whom his rude hand did take compassion on : 
Nay, many times he did not spare the last, 
Until the burial of the first was past. 23 

Turning to the Sancroft Correspondence (Har- 
leian MSS. 5784-5), of which Defoe could have known 
nothing, in a letter from J. Tillison to Dean Sancroft, 
bearing date September 14, 1665, we read even a more 
pathetic tale of sorrow and desolation: "What ey: 
would not weep to see soe many habitacons vninhabit- 
ed? y e poore sick not visited? y e hungry not fed? y e 
grave not satisf yed ? Death stares vs continuously in 
y e face of every infected Person y* passeth by vs, in 
every coffin w ch is dayly & hourely carried along y e 
streets : y e Bells never cease to putt vs in minde of our 
mortality. 24 The custom was in y e beginninge to 
bury y e Dead in y e night only, now both night and 
day will hardly be tyme enough to do it, 25 for y e last 
weeks mortality did too apparently evidence that, that 
y e Dead was piled in heapes above ground for some 
houres before either tyme could be gained or place to 

23 Defoe may or may not have read Austin and Withers: in either 

case they serve to authenticate the "Journal." 

24 Cf. the Allin Correspondence, September 2, 1665, "The dole- 

full and almost universall and continuall ringing and tolling 
of bells," and Pepys, July 26, "the bell always tolling." 

25 Cf. Pepys, August 12, 1665. 

[43] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

bury them in." 26 Evelyn gives a not less gloomy 
picture of the streets when the Plague was at its 
height. On September 7, 1665, he wrote in his Diary : 
' ' I went along the city and suburbs from Kent Street 
to St. James's, a dismal passage, and dangerous to 
see so many coffins exposed in the streets, now thin of 
people ; the shops shut up, and all in mournful silence, 
not knowing whose turn might be next, ' ' By October 
11, conditions were, if possible, even worse, when he 
recorded that he "went through the whole city, having 
occasion to alight out of the coach in several places, . . . 
when I was environed with multitudes of poor pestif- 
erous creatures begging alms; the shops universally 
shut up, a dreadful prospect ! ' ' 

It is Pepys, perhaps, of all who experienced the 
year 1665, who wrote down the greatest number and 
variety of notes concerning the Plague. Some of his 
experiences rival any of the stories told by Defoe in 
the Journal. There are nearly one hundred entries in 
the Diary relating to the Plague, which, when pieced 
together, furnish us with a more direct and coherent, 
as well as more interesting, account of that calamity 
than does Defoe's narrative. Here, of course, we are 
concerned only with such records as corroborate De- 
foe 7 s descriptions of the deserted and sorrowful ap- 
pearance of the town when the Plague was the hottest. 
A few excerpts from the Diary must suffice. On July 
22, 1665, Pepys went from one end of London to the 
other. This is the impression the journey made upon 
him: "I to Fox-Hall [Vauxhall], where to the Spring 
garden ; but I do not see one guest there, the town be- 

36 Defoe denies this, but is in error. 

[44] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

ing so empty of any body to come thither. Only, 
while I was there, a poor woman came to scold with 
the master of the house that a kinswoman, I think, of 
hers, that was newly dead of the plague, might be 
buried in the church-yard ; for, for her , part, she 
should not be buried in the commons as they said she 
should. ... I by coach home, not meeting with but 
two coaches and two carts from White Hall to my own 
house, that I could observe; and the streets mightily 
thin of people. ' ' Three days later, he went to the 
'Change, "which was very thin," and the following 
week (July 30) he remarked that "it was a sad noise 
to hear our bell to toll and ring to-day, either for 
deaths or burials ; I think five or six times." On Sep- 
tember 14, he summarizes a long list of those of his 
friends or their families who had but recently died of 
the Plague, which "do put me into great apprehen- 
sions of melancholy," The absence of boats on the 
Thames was very observable, "and grass grows all up 
and down White Hall court, and nobody but wretches 
in the streets ! " It is this constant dwelling on the ut- 
ter desolation and misery in the town that hovers over 
the reader as he goes through the pages of the Jour- 
nal. So, also, it was the melancholy of it all that so 
impressed Pepys. On October 16, 1665, he again went 
to the Exchange, "which is very empty, God knows! 
and but mean people there. . . . Thence I walked to the 
Tower ; but Lord ! how empty the streets are and mel- 
ancholy, so many sick people in the streets full of 
sores; and so many sad stories overheard as I walk, 
every body telling of this dead, and that man sick, and 
so many in this place, and so many in that." 

[45] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Again, on October 27, he went through Kent 
Street, "a miserable, wretched, poor place, peo- 
ple sitting sicke and muffled up with plasters at every 
4 or 5 doors. ' ' A few days later, however, a new face 
began to appear on the outlook in London, and Pepys 
voiced the new joy in, "we end the month merrily,' ' 
owing to a decrease of over 400 in the weekly Bills. 
Hopes fluctuated with the weather for several weeks, 
but the whole tendency from this onward was in the 
direction of a return to health and healthful activities, 
and away from dismal scenes and melancholy 
stories. 27 

Thus far it is apparent that Defoe's materials 
which he used to illustrate the plain historic facts of 
the Plague Year were in no sense invented by him for 
the purpose, but were taken directly from parallel 
originals, or from stories related to him by the sur- 
vivors of 1665, as abundantly proved by the duplicate 
or parallel stories and descriptions, some of which he 
could have known nothing save from oral accounts. 
Thus, if we find stories by Pepys (such, for example, 
the Croom Farm stories), or in the Sancroft, and Pat- 
rick Correspondence, similar in all essentials to those 
in the Journal, we are certainly justified in concluding 
that there was no necessity for Defoe to exercise his 
genius in inventing stories and conditions represent- 
ing the facts of the Plague, and that he got all these 
first-hand from those who, like Pepys, Sancroft and 
Patrick, experienced them. In other words, Defoe's 

27 Defoe has been criticised (albeit in compliment) to the effect that, 
for purposes of art, he represented the Plague as ceasing more 
suddenly and more completely than it did in reality. This is 
only true as regards the fact, but not Defoe's purpose. Defoe 
simply followed Hodges. 

[46] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

sources were common and equivalent to these. The 
proof of this will appear in the next Section wherein 
the now positively known sources of the Journal are 
quite undistinguishable in all essentials from the fore- 
going, save in the matter of authentic facts as regards 
statistics, etc. 



[47] 



II 



Where, then, did Defoe find the printed materials 
for his history of the Plague ? In the first place, the 
statistics of the deaths from the distemper, which are 
manipulated with much skill by Defoe to awe the 
reader with the increase, spread, and appalling mag- 
nitude of the disease, were taken directly from the 
Bills of Mortality, first compiled in 1665 as London's 
Remembrancer, by John Bell, one of the Parish Clerks. 
The same year, John Graunt included these Bills in 
his Reflections on the Weekly Bills. This latter book 
was reprinted in 1720, and probably furnished Defoe 
with his figures, as the Journal shows indications that 
its author had read the Reflections. It is more than 
probable, also, that the files of the 1665 "newsbooks" 
were examined, as I shall show, as these contained the 
Bills as they appeared each week. As to this im- 
portant feature of the Journal I need only add that, 
with the exception of two or three slips in copying or 
in proofreading, Defoe is absolutely faithful to the 
original Bills. It should be noted that these plainly 
indicated the progress of the Plague from parish to 
parish. With a London map before him, together 
with his accurate acquaintance of the town, Defoe 
should have had little trouble in evolving his history. 
But as he did not give himself the time to arrange 
and organize his materials, the Journal is far from 
being a satisfactory history, — not because of any seri- 
ous misstatements of fact but rather because of the 

[48] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

numerous repetitions and inartistic jumble of the 
facts. 

Next in order should be mentioned the various 
Orders of the Mayor, the Royal Proclamations, etc., 
for these, together with the statistics and Hodges 's 
account of the Plague, furnished Defoe with the en- 
tire framework of the Journal, and much of its tissue. 
In 1721, J. Roberts, a bookseller, republished a num- 
ber of 1665 documents which he called A Collection of 
very Valuable and Scarce Pieces relating to the last 
Plague in the Year 1665. Among other things, this 
included the "Orders Conceived and Published by the 
Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London 
concerning the Infection of the Plague, 1665. " x These 
Orders, which Defoe reprinted verbatim, occupy ten 
pages in the Journal, or a little over one-thirtieth of 
the entire book. But their importance is by no means 
to be measured by the space they occupy; for out 
of these Orders Defoe evolved a considerable propor- 
tion of the remainder of his history. This he accom- 
plished in a manner so skilful as to elude the one who 
reads the Journal for pleasure alone; but when sub- 
jected to the scrutiny of the historian it immediately 
appears what Defoe has done and how he did it. In 
the first place, he restated, either in a contracted or 
expanded form, in his own manner, practically every 
one of these Orders, some of them several times. How 
confidently could he assume the role of an Examiner 

i The same collection contained Dr. Hodges's brief account of the 
Plague, "in a Letter to a Person of Quality. Def , oe , ™* de 

slight use of this in comparison to Hodges's more extended Ac- 
count" with which he introduces his "Loimologia. 

[49] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

in 1665, and speak, as one having authority, of the 
duties of that office, when he had the very printed in- 
structions lying open before him! So, also, all the 
records respecting the searchers and watchmen, shut- 
ting up and marking of houses, burial of the dead, for- 
bidding the use of hackney coaches, keeping the streets 
clean, killing dogs and cats, regulations concerning 
public houses, prohibiting plays, duties of Lord Mayor 
and Aldermen, etc., etc., are but repetitions and vari- 
ations of these Orders. I say ' ' all the records ; ' ■ but 
this is not strictly the whole truth, for Defoe often 
elaborates and embroiders the facts therein with 
knowledge gleaned from other fields. Thus, for ex- 
ample, his discussions of the work of the watchmen, 
the nurses, the doctors, and, above all, the order 
for shutting up, are all enriched and enlarged from 
his other sources. On the other hand, he sometimes 
so closely follows a given Order as to assert positively 
that it was faithfully executed, as in the case of keep- 
ing the streets clean, the prompt burial of the dead, 
etc., at times a physical impossibility. In these in- 
stances, it is very likely that Defoe wished to glorify 
the name and fame of Sir John Lawrence whose 
courage and untiring labour, as Lord Mayor during 
that fateful year, will never be passed over without 
the highest praise. 

By detaching these Orders and scattering them 
over the pages of the Journal in his own style, now 
expanding them in the manner I have related, now il- 
lustrating them with stories coming down from 1665 
(inevitable in essence, otherwise the facts would be 

[50] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

meaningless), 2 now combining them in quite different 
relations, Defoe succeeded in padding up a thin volume 
until it reached the required number of pages to meet 
trade demands, and, in later times, in deceiving an 
idle, ignorant, gullible public into the pleasant belief 
that history is fiction, and that the record of fact, if 
done by one who can translate himself into his ma- 
terials and his materials into himself, raises the 
recorder of those facts from the rank of a clever his- 
torian to the exalted position of inventor of the facts. 
The Collection of very Valuable and Scarce 
Pieces included also "Necessary Directions for the 
Prevention and Cure of the Plague in 1665. With 
divers Remedies of small Charge, by the College of 
Physicians," which Defoe may have made use of, in 
respect of the treatment of the disease in its various 
stages, the care to be taken to prevent the disease from 
getting to the uninfected, airing goods, fumigating 
houses, etc. But as all this information could have 
been had from numerous sources, it would be idle to 
conjecture which one or ones Defoe actually made use 
of. That he probably used the "Necessary Direc- 
tions ' ' is suggested by the fact that he states that they 
were prepared by order of the Lord Mayor, an in- 
ference growing out of the " Orders' ' just discussed, 
which did emanate from the Lord Mayor's Office. The 
"Necessary Directions" came as a result of a Privy 
Council Order, in response to a Royal mandate. 

2 To illustrate: we have the historic facts about shutting up, dis- 
honest watchmen who could be bribed, people escaping out of 
shut-up houses, thus scattering the Plague broadcast If these 
four facts are not mere abstractions, then they appear, as a real 
story when introduced by the simple device, ' 'I heard of a 
man," etc. 

[51] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

The other Orders and Proclamations mentioned 
by Defoe, such as proroguing Parliament, adjourning 
the Law Courts, removing the Exchequer, forbidding 
the holding of Fairs, regulating trade, ordering fasts, 
charities, fires in the streets, etc., were all easily ac- 
cessible in print. Here also should be included the 
prohibition by foreign powers of trade with England. 
I have read all these in 1665 prints, and, of course, 
Defoe also read them, as neither intuition nor genius 
could have invented them to correspond to the orig- 
inals in all respects. And it is here necessary to 
glance at one of the almost certain sources of the 
Journal, — almost certain, because it contains informa- 
tion which would have been difficult for Defoe to find 
elsewhere. I refer to the newspaper, or "newsbook," 
as it was then called. Despite the fact that on the 
very first page of the Journal it is asserted that there 
were "no such things as newspapers in those days" — 
a statement so gratuitous as to arouse suspicion — I 
must believe that Defoe made use of the newspapers of 
1665. s From the Newes, and the Intelligencer, both 
owned and edited by Sir Roger L 'Estrange, could be 
gleaned all the Orders and Proclamations, all foreign 
and domestic news — the weather, the crops, move- 
ments of the fleet, politics, trade, depredations of the 
Dutch capers, the Bills of Mortality, bounty of the 

8 Professor W. P. Trent, in his article on Defoe ("Cambridge His- 
tory of English Literature," IX, p. 1), makes the astounding 
statement that, aside from the "Corantos" (1622-1641) and 
the Civil War and Commonwealth newsbooks, "there existed no 
real newspaper, no news periodical, not a pamphlet or news- 
letter, until the appearance of the 'Oxford Gazette' in 1665." 
As a matter of fact, the "Gazette" was very much inferior to 
the "Newes" and the "Intelligencer," which had been pub- 
lished regularly since August 31, 1663. The "Gazette" super- 
seded them in November, 1665. 

[52] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

rich, progress of the Plague throughout the kingdom, 
superstitious yarns reported from the provinces and 
abroad (some of which I shall reproduce later), and 
not least of all, stories of an extraordinary nature 
concerning the Plague, as, for example, the case of the 
man who escaped into the country with the Plague 
upon him, and died within a mile of his destination, 
and the one who polluted a town by being entertained 
at a public house — comparable to stories related by De- 
foe. In the British Museum, in the famous collection 
of Dr. Burney, there is a complete file of newspapers 
covering the Plague Year. On the margin of each 
copy of the Newes (after it began to publish the Bills, 
early in June, 1665), there is a weekly, and total, 
summary of all burials and of all reported deaths from 
the Plague. These figures are in ink, and a comparison 
of them with others known to be Defoe's, shows an 
identical resemblance in every respect. That these 
summaries agree with those in the Journal proves 
nothing, for both agree with the Bills. However, one 
number of the Newes has no such summary on the 
margin. With a sharpened curiosity, we turn to the 
Journal for the corresponding week (ending July 11, 
1665), and read that " there died last week 1268 of all 
distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 900 
died of the plague. ' ' It is, I believe, the only instance 
where Defoe guesses at the Bill. But as he might 
easily have supplied the correct figures by a mere 
glance at Bell's or Graunt's tables, it would be rash 
to assert that he actually used the very newspapers in 
question, however pleasing the idea. On the other 
hand, it should be remembered that the Journal was 

[53] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

hastily and carelessly put together from notes which 
Defoe took no pains to verify. The wonder is that 
there were not more slips. That he knew of the news- 
papers of 1665 is almost certain ; that he made use of 
them in writing the Journal is highly probable. 

For example, the newspapers teemed with the ad- 
vertisements of quacks. Powders and pills and mix- 
tures, which formerly had done service as sure-cures 
for all common ailments, immediately became poman- 
ders, electuaries, lozenges, plague waters, sovereign in- 
ternal balsams, tabellae chymiatricae, pellulae pro- 
phylactica, etc., etc., all as efficacious for preventing 
and curing plague as they had been for fevers and 
whooping-cough. Defoe presents us with four of 
these, "by way of specimen, " and says that he could 
give you "two or three dozen of the like and yet have 
abundance left behind," in which statement he was 
quite within "compass." Not only were the people 
gulled by high-sounding names, but, as always, they 
were awed by the authority with which some of these 
advertisements were vaunted. Thus, in the Newes 
No. 58 (July 27, 1665) : 

"A sovereign Medicine for the prevention and 
cure of the Plague, Fevers, and Smal Pox, invented 
and practised with rare success by the famous Doctor 
John Baptist von Helmont, is now exposed for sale." 
Another remedy was named after Lady Kent who 
had used it in a former plague ; one was recommended 
by Lord Ruthuen; and still another bore the sign- 
manual of Dr. Thomas Clayton, physician to Charles 
I. If the quack took on a pompous name and claimed 
to have practised abroad, his chances of success were 

[54] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

greatly enhanced. For example (and this reminds 
one not only of Defoe's first advertisement, but also of 
the quack who advertised free advice), 

"One Doctor Stephanies Chrisolitus a famous 
Physitian, lately arrived in these parts, having 
travelled in several Countries which have been af- 
fected with the Plague, hath found by experience to be 
very beneficial (by the blessing of God) for prevent- 
ing the infection thereof, to eat Raisins of the sun in 
the morning fasting, and Malaga Raisins either baked 
or boiled; and this he hath published for the public 
good." 4 

At the other extreme from this philanthropist was 
the rascal who advertised a concoction, the chief in- 
gredient of which he audaciously asserted to be pure 
gold, for which he charged the modest price of twenty 
shillings the ounce ! Other ruses to take in the pub- 
lic were not wanting. As soon as the College of Phy- 
sicians published the result of their conference as to 
medicines for the poor, many quacks pounced upon 
this and traded upon the name, 'as recommended by 
the College/ etc. However, aside from gulling the 
public, it probably made little difference in the end, 
as the College's own preparations proved utterly 
worthless. Indeed, Kemp (Brief Treatise p. 3) 
classed the College along with the other quacks as 
publishing ' ' observations which they have met with in 
the cure of diseases, . . . yet not one medicine found out 
to preserve the Doctor." 5 Instinctively, we recall 

4 "Newes, " No. 42. 

5 In charity, it should be remembered that the doctors at that time 

had scarcely reached the experimental stage in dealing with 
plague. Dr. George Thompson, who opened a victim of the 
Plague, is a rare exception. Dr. William Boghurst also ren- 

[55] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

the names of Burnett, Starkey, Dey, O'Dowd, etc.; 
and, truly, when we scan the College's "Necessary 
Directions," we may w 7 ell appreciate Kemp's sarcas- 
tic taunt. Take, for instance, the following (ed. 1721, 
p. 54) for bringing carbuncles and blains to a head: 
"Pull off the feathers from the tails of living cocks, 
hens, pigeons, or chickens, and holding their bills, hold 
them hard to the botch or swelling, and so keep them 
at that part until they die; and by this means draw 
out the poison." Dr. Hodges, himself a thoroughly 
modern man in his views in many respects, was skepti- 
cal as to the efficacy of the powder of the unicorn's 
horn, but at the same time recommended dried toad's 
powder! After Kemp's severe criticism we might 
expect something different from him in the following 
prescription (Brief Treatise, p. 55) : "Take crabs' 
eyes one ounce, burnt hartshorn half an ounce, the 
black tops of crabs ' claws an ounce and a half ; make 
them all into a powder, and take of it one dram in a 
glass of posset-drink when you go to bed, and drink 
another draught of posset-drink after, to wash it 
down. ' ' 

Not only were the common, ignorant sort taken 
in by the quacks' specious advertisements, but even 
the more intelligent also were duped. The case of one 
Eustace Burneby is in point. Trading upon the 
name of Dr. Tobias Whitaker, physician in ordinary 
to Charles II, he secured from Robert Boreman, Rec- 

dered great service to science by making most careful obser- 
vations of the distemper in all its stages and under every con- 
dition. He visited "40, 50, or 60 patients a day." dressed 
the sores of 40 a day, ate and drank with the patients, allowed 
them to breathe in his face, and held them in his arms while 
they were dying. Cf. "Loimographia, " and "Intelligencer" 
No. 59. 

[56] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

tor of St. Giles's in the Field, and from the sexton, 
John Gerey, an affidavit to the effect that in four 
houses where divers persons had died of the Plague, 
after administering Burneby's powder to the sur- 
vivors in those houses, not one thereafter died ; where- 
as in houses not using the said powder, "divers have 
died, and in many of them the whole family.' 76 At 
first sight this looks somewhat suspicious, but when we 
recall that at that very moment Lord Arlington 
(Chief Secretary of State) and the Privy Council 
were being completely gulled by the arch-quack him- 
self, one James Angier, who professed to have put a 
stop to the infection at Lyons, Paris, Toulouse and oth- 
er cities, we may readily credit the Rev. Mr. Boreman 
with sincerity. Official sanction was given to 
Angier 's "remedies" and depots were designated 
where they might be had. It was the most stupen- 
dous swindle of the whole year. 7 

Likewise the belief in the efficacy of magic phil 
tres, charms, amulets, etc., mentioned by Defoe in this 
connection, was not confined solely to the lower classes. 
Faith in this superstition still survives and probably 
will continue to live as long as man does. Within a 
few feet of where I now sit penning these lines, there 
is as this moment on the table of an unknown co- 
worker no fewer than four or five bogey-frighteners 
which are always propped and arranged in precisely 
the same relative order and position, before the in- 

6 "Intelligencer," No. 51. 

7 See "Newes," No. 50. Hodges ( "Loimologia," p. 22) alludes 

to this case, without mentioning names, in most disparaging 
terms. It should be observed here that the profession of 
physick was at that time divided into two bitterly opposing 
camps, one following Galen, the other Hippocrates. To all 
outward appearances their practices differed little. 

[57] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

dividual whom they own begins his daily work. They 
differ much in outward appearance, and, presumably, 
in satanic virtues; but there they are day after day, 
day after day, and one imagines that they are simi- 
larly placed on a shelf at the foot of the bed, night 
after night, night after night. And who has not car- 
ried a rabbit's foot, pocket-piece, wish-bone, horse- 
shoe, or the like, for good luck; or worn asafoetida, or 
some such lovely stuff, to ward off small-pox, or some- 
thing else ? Well, Defoe had any number of examples 
of 1665 amulets in his own library, or otherwise easily 
accessible. A few of these may not prove amiss here. 
Kemp (op. cit., 64) recommends the following: "Take 
of white and yellow arsenick of each half an ounce, 
the powder of dried toads two ounces, mercury sub- 
limed, wheat flowre, the roots of dittany, of each three 
drams, saffron, the fragments of jacynth and emer- 
ald, of each one scruple, make them all into powder, 
and with gum dragon dissolved in rose-water, make 
them into cakes about the breadth of a shilling, and 
the thickness of two half crowns, and dry them in the 
sun, or in an oven after the bread is taken out. 

1 ' I need not tell you that you must not eat them, 
but sew them in a little silk bag, fastening it to a rib- 
bon, and hanging it about your neck, let it be about 
the middle of your breast." Kemp does not explain 
just what effect the tablet thus made and worn had, 
and we must look to other authorities for enlighten- 
ment. Fortunately these are numerous. Dr. George 
Thompson, whom I have mentioned as having dared to 
dissect a corpse dead of the plague, showed the unmis- 
takeable symptoms of the disease before the operation 

[58] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

was finished. He analyzes his own case with much 
praiseworthy detail, and the treatment thereof. He 
first had resort to the remedies then commonly used 
to produce sweating, and then proceeds, ' ' Neither was 
I wanting to make use of Helmont's xenexton, a toad, 
the powder of which my dear friend Dr. Starkey gave 
me, made up in the form of a trochisk of his own or- 
dering: I likewise hung about my neck a large toad 
dried, prepared not long before in as exquisite a man- 
ner as I possibly could, with my own fingers. This 
toad sewed up in a linnen cloth was placed about the 
region of my stomach, where after it had remained 
some hours, became so tumefied, distended (as it were 
blown up) to that bignesse, that it was an object of 
wonder to those that beheld it. Had I not felt and 
seen this swollen dead body of the toad, I should very 
much have doubted by relation the truth thereof." 8 
John Allin is even more explicit as to the working of 
the toad charm. "Here [in London]," he says, "are 
many who wear amulets made of the poison of the 
toad, which, if there be no infection, workes nothing, 
but upon any infection invading from time to time, 
raise a blister, w ch a plaister heales, and so they are 
well." 9 The same writer is also responsible for the 
following rare gem: 

"Friend get a piece of angell gold, if you can 
of Eliz. coine (y* is y e best), w ch is phylosophicall gold, 
and keepe it allways in yo r mouth when you walke out 
or any sicke persons come to you: you will find 
strange effect of it for good in freedome of breathing, 

8 "Loimotomia," p. 86. 

9 "Archaelogia," xxxvii, p. 6. 

[59] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

&c. as I have done; if you lye w th it in your mouth 
w th out yo r teeth, as I doe, viz. in one side betweene 
your cheke and gumms, and so turning it sometimes 
on one side, sometimes on y e other." 10 

The superstitions of the people at the time of the 
1665 Plague may appear to modern minds as having 
been exaggerated by Defoe. "The people," he says, 
1 ' from what principle I cannot imagine, were more ad- 
dicted to prophecies and astrological conjunctions, 
dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they were be- 
fore or since." This is literally true, and, although 
making excellent use of the fact, early in the Journal, 
to impress upon the reader the apprehensive state of 
mind in which people found themselves at the out- 
break of the Plague, due to the terrifying predictions 
of astrologers, fortune-tellers, and the like, Defoe 
barely states the conditions of the time in this respect. 
That these conditions were, to a certain extent, the re- 
sult of money-making quacks, as suggested by Defoe, 
there is no doubt. But the chief explanation is a 
psychological one: the astrologers (of which no other 
age produced so many) were quite as much the result 
of the mental state of the people as the other way 
about. This view is carried out by the fact that a 
belief in portents and prodigies was not confined to 
the ignorant classes alone, but possessed all ranks of 
society, save the rare few. The almost universal be- 
lief at that time — held by the mediaeval mind of all 
times — that the Plague was a special scourge for 
man's sins (some gave one reason, some another, as 
suited their political and religious prejudices), was 

10 "Archselogia," xxxvii, p. 15. 

[60] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

but a short step removed from a certain belief in fore- 
warnings of that scourge. Upon this predisposition 
to ascribe all calamities of whatever nature to super- 
natural causes, the astrologers multiplied and bat- 
tened. 11 The way in which they fondled and fostered 
the superstitious state of mind, already prepossessed 
of fantasies, may be seen from the following extract 
from Gadbury's De Cometis (1665, p. 48) : 

"Now, although I have a great faith in appari- 
tions of this nature [i. e. comets] ; and knowing that 
melancholy heads, by the strength of fancy and imag- 
ination, may conceit they see such things that really 
are not: yet, when such fancies shall really possess 
the general opinion, it is to be presumed that some- 
what more than common is contriving against the gen- 
erality of mankind. As we see it in any individual 
person that is engaged in any business of concern- 
ment, if there be perturbario mentis, or (as we used to 
say) if his heart misgive him, or that he be in his own 
mind perswaded he shall be worsted or come to dam- 
age in his undertaking, he is more than half van- 
quished before he come to the trial. Our fears but 
apt and prepare us for the embraces of that mischief 
we dread. And indeed the world not of late, vainly 
feared such mischiefs as these comets portend; but 
as soon as they have begun to fear, they have been 
compelled to share therein. I need not instance in the 

11 Appended to "Coelestis Legatus," Gadbury gives a list of forty- 
two astrologers "who either are (or were lately) living." This 
included the names of "many Reverend Divines, and learned 
Physicians." This does not include the "pseudo-Astronomers, 
or "knap-sack Astrologers, for not only this Age but this great 
City swarms with such Cattell." "De Cometis," p. 2. Defoe's 
reference to signs bearing the heads of Friar Bacon, Ambrose 
Merlin, and Mother (i. e. Ursula) Shipton is self-explanatory: 
these names were synonyms of prophecy and magic. 

[61] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

activity of the sword, or the incroaching quality of the 
sickness, both which are playing their parts to pur- 
pose all Europe over, and will more within a few 
years. For the world must know and believe it as a 
truth, THAT COMETS ARE NOT GONE AS SOON 
AS THEY DISAPPEAR/' 

Despite Hodges 's assertion (Loimologia, p. 4) 
that people of the better (*. e. more intelligent) sort 
gave little credence to such predictions, we read in 
Dr. George Thompson's Loimotomia (1666, p. 66), 
"That comets, or blazing stars do portend some evil 
to come upon mortals, is confirmed by long observa- 
tion and sad experience, as likewise phenomena of a 
Parelios, Paraselene, apparitions of Dracones volantes 
& Trahes Scintillae, new stars, battles fought, and cof- 
fins carried through the air, howlings, screeehings, and 
groans heard about church-yards, also raining of 
blood, unwonted matter, &c, all of which having some- 
thing extra Maturarn, are portentious and prodigious, 
all ordained by that good Philanthropos to advertise 
us to a timely resipiscence, and prevention of those 
evils that hang over our heads. " And Hodges, not- 
withstanding his contempt for astrologers, felt com- 
pelled (op. cit., p. 31) to acknowledge the certain 
"footsteps of an overruling power" in the Plague of 

1665. Even Dr. William Boghurst (Loimographia, 

1666, pr. 1894, p. 20), while branding the prognosti- 
cators as "those curious observers who pretend to bee 
most exquisite on the foresight of future contingencies 
of good or evile, and a haire shall not wagge without 
their observation, and therefore in their yearly pre- 
diction fill the world with noyses of warrs, plagues, 

[62] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

destruction, and overthrowes of kingdomes, mon- 
archies, that to this [Plague of 1665] said nothing at 
all, 12 yet they will name the Starrs to be all in the 
fault," — nevertheless, includes in his signs fore- 
shadowing a plague, "Cometts, gleames of Fire, and 
fiery impressions in the Aire," "Famine; also warr," 
"ill conditions of the Starrs, if you will believe the 
Astrologers," etc. 

Of course, the astrologers, without an exception, 
looked upon conjunctions, comets, and, indeed, all 
exceptional phenomena, as forerunners of evil things, 
and comets in particular were terrible presages. 
Thus, John Holwell (Catastrophe Mundi, p. 40), writ- 
ing a few years after the Plague and Fire, asserted 
that these calamities had been clearly foreshadowed 
by the comets of 1664 and 1665 respectively. After 
such dire examples, he continues, "what man is he 
who dare presume to say that comets are not the pre- 
monishers to mankind, of some more than ordinary 
Judgment to fall upon them for their sins ; ' ' and John 
Merrifield (Castastasis Mundi, p. 28) is in accord 
when he says that comets "proceed not from natural 
causes . . . but from Divine Providence, and sent by 
Almighty God as tokens of his wrath against mankind 
for his sins. ' ' But to quote all the 1665 " authorities ' ' 
on comets, conjunctions of planets, and other "pro- 
digies," would require volumes. The bookstalls of 
that time were literally stuffed with "almanacks," the 

12 As a matter of fact. Richard Edlyn did predict both the Plague 
of 1665 and the Fire of 1666 (*"Prae-Nuncius Sydereus," 72). 
It was such lucky (or unlucky) guessing as this that inspired 
the ignorant to believe in portents, and thus increased the mis- 
chievous apprehensions mentioned by Defoe and the other writers 
on the Plague. 

[63] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

result of a popular demand, and it is safe to say that 
everyone was steeped in their contents. William 
Lilly (1602-1681), mentioned by Defoe, held the place 
of preeminence among the astrologers of the day, and, 
in addition to many prophecies, published his alma- 
nacks annually from 1644 until his death. A far 
greater and more influential man was John Gadbury 
(1627-1704) who completely combined the careful ob- 
servations of the scientist with the quack predictions 
of the astrologer. 13 As far as his instruments would 
permit, he exactly measured and recorded the pheno- 
mena of the heavens year after year, and then as in- 
dustriously proceeded to prognosticate their effects. 
Like his contemporaries, all apparent irregularities of 
nature were interpreted by him as portents. Among 
an infinite variety of choice prodigies seen or heard in 
the skies, Gadbury enumerates (Natura Prodigiorum, 

13 The other names and titles mentioned by Defoe on the same 
page with Lilly and Gadbury may as well be disposed of here. 
A book entitled "Come out of her my People" may, or may not, 
have existed. As everybody knows, Defoe's quotation is di- 
rectly from "Revelations," xviii, 4. He gives his source for 
"Yet forty days and London shall be destroyed." The original 
text ("Jonah," iii, 4) reads, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall 
be overthrown." "Oh the great and dreadful God I" is at once 
recognised as from "Daniel," ix, 4. It has been mentioned 
already that "Woe to Jerusalem" and the naming sword are 
from Josephus ("Works," ed. 1773, Bk. vii, ch. 12). There 
are any number of "Britain's Remembrancers." George With- 
ers gave that title to his history of the Plague of 1625. Again, 
in 1644, there was published "England's Remembrancer, or a 
Warning from Heaven," etc. "Warning" was a common sub- 
title during that age of prophecies. Thus, "Prodigies & Appa- 
ritions, or England's Warning Pieces," 1643. This book con- 
tains the expression, "fair warning," which may have fur- 
nished Defoe with his title. It also narrated a sufficient number 
of "prodigies" to supply Defoe with all his materials on that 
topic. In one instance, viz., "Poor Robin's Almanack," Defoe 
never saw more than the title, for this book was a broad bur- 
lesque of the astrological trumpery of the times. For example, 
Poor Robin records this wisdom for February, 1664: "This month 
this year hath twenty and nine days in it; now if it had two 
more it would have thirty and one." The following month, "the 
fishmonger's harvest," is filled with a series of puns on plaice, 
carp, maids, soles, pout, etc. 

[64] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

1660, p. 14) "burials, processions, combats, weapons 
of all sorts, crowns and sceptres, flaming swords and 
crosses, castles, cities, towers, monsters, comets, 
eclipses, etc., etc. He then arranges all these in a 
chronological table of "prodigies with their effects,' ' 
extending over forty-six pages and covering the years 
from the birth of Christ down to 1660. Blazing stars, 
swords and crosses are frequent "causes," followed 
by plague, war, famine, etc. 

In London's Deliverance Predicted (July, 1665), 
Gadbury deals directly with the Great Plague in rela- 
tion to certain "causes." Among these, he specifies 
the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, October 10, 
1663, of Saturn and Mars, November 12, 1664, 14 the 
two comets at the close of 1664, and the comet which 
appeared early in 1665. 15 Aside from his predictions 
in this characteristic book, Gadbury 's testimony as to 
the outbreak of the Plague in 1664 is of so much inter- 
est as to justify its quotation in part. Commenting 
on the comets and conjunctions just mentioned, he 
says : * ' By this connexion of causes, it is somewhat ap- 
parent that this Pest should have taken its beginning 
at the later end of 1664 ; and truly had not the Winter 

14 It will be recalled that Defoe speaks of these two conjunctions 

as if they both occurred in 1664. This slip was due to the fact 
that he followed Hodges, who did not give dates. 

15 According to the usual account there was but one comet at the 

close of 1664. Defoe mentions only one comet in 1664 and one 
in 1665, and he deals with these as to appearance, colour, motion, 
etc., as presaging symbols of the Plague and Fire respectively. 
These descriptions of Defoe's are in direct opposition to those 
of M. Adrien Auzout, the eminent French astronomer of the day, 
who recorded his observations of one comet in 1664 and one in 
1665. Defoe has been accredited with reversing the characteris- 
tics of these two comets (cf. E. W. Brayley, ed. "Journal," 
1872, p. 29) "for purposes of heightening the interest." Gad- 
bury, however, ("De Cometis," 31 sq. and "Coelestis Legatus," 
62) has definitely and accurately recorded three comets in all in 
1664-5 Two of these exactly fit Defoe's descriptions. 

[65] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

then been so extreamly sharp (it having a frost of al- 
most ten weeks continuance together) to have kept it 
back, as we knew it did, it had beyond all question 
broke forth then. Nay, and break forth it did then 
too, as my self can experimentally testify, having been 
personally visited with it at Christmas that year. 
And my good friend Mr. Josias Westwood the ehirur- 
geon (whose assistance I then craved, and advice I 
followed (I bless God) to my preservation) hath told 
me since that many of his patients at that time were 
afflicted with the same distemper, and yet obtained 
cure against it, the air being then so friendly to 
nature, and an enemy unto the Pestilence. And be- 
sides, it was but president in people to keep it from 
the knowledge of the world (since few or none dyed 
thereof) as long as they could ; for we find that it came 
to a discovery soon enough to amaze and terrifie the 
whole Nation, and hath bid fair for the ruin of trade 
of all kinds in this great and populous city." 

That the astrologers, with their nativity dia- 
grams, "airy triplicities, ' ' etc., had succeeded thor- 
oughly in bamboozling the people is evidenced by vari- 
ous newsletters from every portion of England and 
the Continent, on the appearance of the first comet in 
December, 1664. Many of these letters, after relating 
the facts respecting the comet, turn to the ' ' wisemen ' ? 
and "artists" "to enquire what it may portend." A 
letter from York (dated December 18, 1664) to Gad- 
bury closes with the request that, "you will not only 
oblige me, but many of my friends hereabouts, very 
much, if you will but vouchsafe your opinion in a 
line or two from your own hand, what this strange 

[66] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

new Star may portend." 1 * Some of these letters con- 
cerning the comet reported other occompanying "pro- 
digies," comparable to some of those mentioned by 
Defoe. In a newsletter from Hamburgh, December 
24, 1664 (published in Newes, January 5, 1665), we 
read that ' ' The great Comet lately seen here, appears 
no longer with us; but here is now another, much 
less then the formar, rising South-East, and setting 
North- West. They write from Vienna by the last 
[mail], of a great Comet seen there also, shewing itself 
first from the East, and pointing toward Hungary. 
There has been likewise seen in the ayre the appear- 
ance of a Coffin, which causes great anxiety of thought 
among the people." From Erfurt came still more 
alarming accounts. "We have had our part here," 
so runs the letter, "of the Comet, as well as other 
Places, besides which, here have been other terrible 
Apparitions and Noises in the ayre, as Fires, and 
sounds of Canon, and Musket-shot ; and here has like- 
wise appear 'd several times the resemblance of a Black 
man, which has made our Sentinels to quit their Posts ; 
and one of them was lately thrown down by him from 
the top of the Wall." 

As intimated elsewhere in the course of this essay, 
it is likely that Defoe may have got at least some of his 
superstitious stories, as for instance the coffin appari- 
tion, from the newspapers; but as all these "prod- 
igies" were common to the superstittion of the times, 

19 The strong belief in, and the fearful apprehensions occasioned by, 
predictions of calamities, is well illustrated by the prophecy of 
a mere child, when the Plague was at its height in 1665, that 
the mortality would increase "till 18,317 dye in a weeke (which 
all endeavors are used to conceale)." "Archaslogia" xxxvii, 
15. In Seville, an astrologer was "clapt up" because some of 
his predictions of dire events came true, and the authorities 
wished to allay the apprehensions of the people. 

[67] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

it cannot always be said with certainty that any given 
original was Defoe's source of authority. For ex- 
ample, Gadbury copied the Hamburgh letter just 
quoted (De Cometis, p. 48) and as it is comparatively 
certain that Defoe had read Gadbury he may have 
found it there. In the case of the flaming sword in 
the Journal, as Defoe had quoted the Josephus book a 
few pages earlier, we may assume that authority to 
be the source of that superstition. At any rate, even 
the few extracts and references which I have given to 
the superstitions of the times, and the influence of the 
astrologers in perturbing the public mind with appre- 
hensions of dreadful and dreaded events, will serve to 
indicate what a storehouse of materials Defoe had to 
draw from in writing this part of his Journal. Defoe 
possessed, among other books of a similar character, 
the " Prophecies' ' of Notradamus which had been re- 
published in English by Lilly in 1651, and again by 
Holwell in 1682. Both these editions contained the 
numerous drawings or "hieroglyphics" of the orig- 
inal. Moreover, besides the chronicles (of which De- 
foe owned three or four) and the numerous alma- 
nacks, already mentioned, there were the easily acces- 
sible works of Wing, Wharton, Tacke, Mother Ship- 
ton, Ashmole, Ardee, Saunders, Booker, Marsh, Wells, 
Flood, Hopton, Vaux, etc., ad infinitum. 

For the fortune-telling quacks, the astrologer 
quacks had as much contempt as Defoe had for both. 
Gadbury says of them {op. cit. 164) that "so common 
and general are these catching errors become, that it 
is now a most difficult and hard matter to distinguish 
a plow-man from a natural philosopher from his dis- 

[68] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

course. And ... as in former times it was a rare mat- 
ter to find seven wise men in the world, it is now as dif- 
ficult and troublesome to discover the same number 
of fools. Every man, almost, that hath scarcely ar- 
rived at the happiness of reading a Horn-book, ac- 
counts all things that come within the parcimeter or 
compass of discourse beneath him and his genius . . . 
that treateth not of the raising of spirits of some 
periapt, amulet, or magical charm or spell. ' ' Of these 
fortune-tellers there were two classes, — those who 
for "fame and money impose upon the understanding 
of simple-minded, credulous people/ ' and, secondly, 
"a company of poor, melancholy, crack-brain 'd shal- 
low-soul'd creatures, born as well to spread lies and 
impostures as to credit and believe them." (This 
from the author of Natura Prodigiorum!) In which 
of these classes Gadbury would catalogue the follow- 
ing, I will leave to the reader to decide. He relates 
(op. cit. 174) that Sir K. Digbie once trapped "that 
Arch-pretender, Dr. Lamb" in his knavery, and 
threatened to kick him down the stairs; upon which 
circumstance he comments : "I am of belief the appli- 
cation of this story will reach (if not over-reach) the 
consciences and practices of some among us that wear 
the golden name of Astrologers who very commonly, 
under pretence thereof, make use of a Christal, and 
other pretended cheats and shifts, to gull the sillier 
sort of people. Nay, they are made use of sometimes 
to persons at very great rates (viz. six pounds a call, 
as they knavishly call it) even to their undoing, and to 
the great scandal of Astrologie (which, as it is dealt 
with, is the only over-cheat of these times) and, in- 

[69] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

deed, to the shipwreck and ruin of the practitioner's 
conscience, honesty, and good name. Nay, the vil- 
lainy is grown so rife and common now among us, that 
he is not worthy (almost) to be deemed an astrologer, 
that cannot stretch both his conscience and skill, like 
unto those persons touched, who by their practices 
should be of Cacus's progeny, because they so emi- 
nently pretend to make with him, 

Candida de nigris, & de candentibus arra." 
So much for that feature of the Journal dealing 
with the superstition and gullibility of the people. 
Of a different character from statistics, proclamations, 
advertisements, almanacks, etc., are the sources treat- 
ing of the history of the Plague, — its origin, its first 
appearance in London, its progress, ravages and de- 
cline — which supplied Defoe with that necessary ele- 
ment of his narrative. Too much importance cannot 
be attached to these sources, as they brought to Defoe 
something more than mere facts, they lent him lan- 
guage and "atmosphere." In 1722, there were no 
fewer than two score volumes on the subject of plague, 
some mere pamphlets, some treating only of the pre- 
vention and cure of the disease, while others combined 
the treatment with the history of plague. About one- 
half of these volumes refer to the Plague of 1665, 
while some of them ante-date it. It is needless to go 
over the list of these, as the mass of them were of little 
use to Defoe in the composition of the Journal. 
Kemp 's Brief Treatise, the author of Golgotha, the au- 
thor of Shutting up Infected Houses, and a few others 
mentioned in Section I contributed certain aspects: 
but, in the main, Defoe relied upon very few sources 

[70] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

for the skeleton of his narrative. Foremost amongst 
these stands Dr. Nathaniel Hodges, so frequently men- 
tioned in the course of this discussion. That his work 
was freely drawn upon by Defoe has long been known 
to scholars, but, inasmuch as no one hitherto has had 
the curiosity, or courage, to analyze the Journal with 
reference to Loimologia, the tremendous debt which 
the former owes to the latter has never been fully ap- 
preciated. Hodges 's "Historical Account " fills less 
than thirty octavo pages ; yet Defoe not only took over 
practically every item contained in Hodges 's account, 
but in almost every instance followed him so closely 
as to copy his errors, and repeated his subject matter 
so many times that the materials borrowed from 
Loimologia gave Defoe his starting point no fewer 
than one hundred and twenty-five times, — and this 
does not take into account the numerous instances 
where the narration or discussion (as e. g. of shutting 
up) extends over a number of pages, such cases being 
counted only once in the sum total! This statement 
appears incredible, but any one who will take the pains 
to analyze Hodges 's "Account," and then the Jour- 
nal, will find it true "within compass/' — albeit some 
idols may get broken in the process. 

Before me as I write I have such an analysis, with 
the result as stated. Even the digressionary style of 
Hodges is followed by Defoe, and the former's account 
of the origin of the 1665 Plague might easily be mis- 
taken for the opening paragraph of the Journal, both 
as to style and content. 17 A synopsis of Hodges 's ac- 

17 I have traced the progress of the distemper over Europe before 
it got to England, but space forbids going into this. Suffice 
it to say that Defoe's account is strictly historical. 

[71] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

count of the Plague will serve to illustrate the extent 
of Defoe's reliance upon that single source, a brief 
outline of which follows. According to Hodges, the 
distemper came to Holland in a parcel of infected 
goods from Smyrna, and from Holland to England 
where it suddenly appeared in London near the close 
of 1664, when three died of it. Some people took 
alarm and moved into the City ; wild rumours and pre- 
dictions terrified the common sort whose very fears 
precipitated the distemper. Their apprehensions 
were further augmented by the appearance of the 
comet and the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter, 
and Saturn and Mars, followed by the terrifying pre- 
dictions of astrologers. Hodges deplores this fear- 
mongering. A hard frost, lasting three months, lulled 
people into a belief of security; but about Christmas 
Hodges is called to a case which he pronounced to be 
plague. With the breaking up of the frost in the 
Spring of 1665, the disease reappeared and soon 
gained ground. The Magistrates issued a shutting-up 
order, but the efficacy of the practice is questioned, 
and, on the whole, condemned, though there is some- 
thing to be said on the other side, especially at the first 
appearance of the distemper. It was decreed that all 
infected houses must be marked with a red cross and 
the "Lord have mercy" sign over the door, a guard 
placed outside to prevent the inmates from escaping, 
and to pass in food and medicine to those shut up. The 
establishment of a forty-days quarantine (according 
to the printed "Orders," it was only four weeks), to 
be counted from the last one infected in a shut up 
house, caused consternation and mischief, for this or- 

[72] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

der and the "tragical mark over the door" frightened 
many neighbours away who might have been of service 
in saving lives. The dishonest and murderous prac- 
tices of wicked nurses cannot be too strongly con- 
demned. A strange symptom of the disease was an 
insane or perverse pleasure the infected manifested of 
breathing into the faces of the well. 18 

The Plague "doubtfully reigned" throughout 
May and June, "sometimes raging in one part, and 
then in another. ' ' The minds of the people fluctuated 
with the Bills: "as often as the funerals decreased, 
great hopes were conceived of its [the Plague's] dis- 
appearance, then on a sudden again their increase 
threw all into dejection." This caused the in- 
habitants to leave precipitously, and they "flocked in 
such crowds out of town, as if London had quite gone 
out of itself. " In an effort to stem the tide of devas- 
tation, the authorities ordered monthly fasts and pub- 
lic prayers, and commanded the College of Physicians 
to prepare some remedy in English for the poor peo- 
ple, who were the chief sufferers in this calamity. 
But their labours proved in vain. A number of emi- 
nent physicians tendered their assistance; yet, al- 
though the weather conditions were good and food 
plentiful, 19 the ravages of the disease continued un- 
abated. In July and August it changed its former 
slow: and languid pace to a swift and terrible 

18 Mead ("Short Discourse," 8th ed., p. xvii) repeats this state- 

ment and offers an explanation for the cause of the symptom. 
Defoe rehashes the same explanation, but, in a sort of mock 
piety, does not see how the fact can be "reconciled to religion.' 

19 Hodges is here misleading. He himself calls it the "poor's 

Plague," and all the sources (and Defoe) agree that the poor 
suffered greatly for the very necessities of life. The constant 
and pathetic appeals for charity support the fact: if food was 
plentiful it was not free. 

[73] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

slaughter, so that 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 died in a 
week, — once 8,000. The calamity was inexpressible : 
carcasses lay unburied, one heard dying groans and 
ravings of delirium, relations and friends bewailing 
their losses, and, at the same time, anticipating their 
own sudden end; death was the sure midwife to all 
children; the newly-wed died in their first embrace; 
some ran about staggering like drunk and fell dead in 
the street ; others lay comatose, half -dead, still others 
fell dead in the market while purchasing the necessi- 
ties of life; and who " would not burst with grief to 
see the stock of a future generation hang upon the 
breasts of a dead mother?" 20 

The Plague spared no order, age, or sex. The 
divine perished in the exercise of his priestly duties, 
the physician died administering his own antidotes. 
Of the female sex most died, 21 and few children 
escaped. Inheritances passed to three or four heirs in 
as many days ; there were not enough sextons to bury 
the dead ; the bells were hoarse with continual tolling ; 
the burial places were inadequate, and so large pits 
were dug in waste grounds and thirty or forty bodies 
were thrown in at one time. Those who attended 
funerals of friends one evening were often buried the 
next. 

The Court being at Oxford, the City authorities 
ordered fires built in the streets for three days to- 
gether. The advice of the physicians was against this, 

20 Defoe worked over this statement into the story (about the 

middle of the *' Journal") beginning, "I could tell here dismal 
stories of living infants being found sucking the breasts of 
their [dead] mothers," etc. 

21 Nearly all the authorities make this statement, but the Bills of 

Mortality show only a slight excess of women over men. 

[74] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

and the sequel proved them right, for more than 4,000 
died in one night following the fires. 22 The practices 
of chemists and quacks also aggravated the ravages of 
the disease. "They thrust into every hand some 
trash or other under the disguise of a pompous title. ' ' 
Hardly any escaped who trusted their remedies, but 
as a partial vengeance for their wicked impostures, 
"they were caught in the common ruin." 28 Experi- 
ments with foreign medicines also proved disasterous. 

The contagion spread to the country, especially 
to the towns along the Thames, owing to infected 
goods being carried up it. 

The height passed, "the Plague by leisurely de- 
grees declined, ' ' and, besides, it was now less fatal, for 
a greater proportion of the infected recovered than in 
midsummer. People grew less fearful, one of another, 
and after a time "a dawn of health appeared as sud- 
den and as unexpected as the cessation of the follow- 
ing conflagration." 24 This was due to the less malig- 

22 Defoe doubts the accuracy of this, and it is not corroborated 

by any other source. That at least 10,000 a week died at one 
stage in the Plague is not questioned by the author of the 
"Journal." 

23 Defoe paraphrases Hodges thus: "Some fancied they were all 

swept away in the infection to a man, and were for calling it 
a particular work of God's vengeance." It will be remembered 
also that Defoe points out that a number of eminent physicians 
were carried away by the Plague. Hodges (p. 15) says eight 
or nine physician died (some of these I have already men- 
tioned). Defoe had a list of five physicians and eighteen sur- 
geons. Pepys (October 16, 1665) heard that in Westminster 
they were all dead save one apothecary. John Allin on Septem- 
ber 14, 1665, wrote that seven score doctors, apothecaries and 
surgeons "are all dead of this distemper in and about ye city." 
("Archaelogia," xxxvii, p. 10). While Dr. George Thompson was 
suffering from plague (after dissecting a corpse), his two col- 
leagues, Drs. Dey and Starkey, died. Of this Thompson wrote, 
"At that very time [August, 1665] . . . two of my most esteemed 
consorts, Dr. Joseph Dey and Dr. George Starkey, two pillars 
of chimical physick, were both reposed in their graves before I 
knew of their deaths." ( "Loimotomia," 96). Starkey ascribed 
his death to the taking an over-draught of beer. 

24 It is this statement, which Defoe merely takes over from Hodges, 

that has been apologized for as "for purposes of art." 

[75] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

nant nature of the distemper. And, just as at the be- 
ginning, all other diseases seemed to go into the 
Plague, so now, the Plague degenerated into other con- 
tagious diseases. In December, people crowded back 
to town as eagerly as they formerly ran away, and 
that too without fear, lying in beds but recently oc- 
cupied by the infected. Shops were again opened, 
and business took on a normal tone. Cheerfulness 
and courage became more manifest, and, before long, 
the ravages of the Plague were scarcely discernible. 
Some compute that over 100,000 died of the distemper. 
It broke out again in the Spring of 1666, but was read- 
ily conquered. 

Aside from the few disagreements (indicated in 
the footnotes) the foregoing summary of Hodges 's 
"Historical Account of the Plague" might readily be 
mistaken for a condensed outline of Defoe's history; 
and, truly, such it is so far as it goes. If we but add 
to this the statistical and other documentary data, and 
the illustrative stories and descriptions of the town 
and people during the Plague, we should then have 
the Journal complete. It is here, of course, that the 
stickler for the fictional element in the Journal comes 
in with his theory ; and it must be confessed that the 
most effective feature of Defoe's history is the use he 
makes of the illustrative stories and dismal scenes to 
arouse in the reader a feeling of the apalling calamity, 
and an overwhelming pity for the sufferers. But here 
again there was absolutely nothing original with De- 
foe. Not for one moment can his work be compared, 
in richness of materials, sincerity, and eloquent 
pathos, with one of his chief sources, namely, Thomas 

[76] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City, which I 
have had occasion to mention more than once. Vin- 
cent was one of those Non-conforming preachers who 
had been ousted from their livings by the Act of 
August 24, 1662, and, by the Act of March 24, 1665, 
banished five miles from all Corporations. He was 
one of several such ministers mentioned by Defoe who 
remained in London during the Plague and filled the 
empty pulpits made vacant by Conformists running 
away from their flocks. 25 Naturally, Vincent saw the 
Plague in the light of a just vengeance sent from God 
on his political and religious enemies, — especially on 
those ministers who had run away, and Defoe may 
well have had him in mind, among others, whose ' ' ser- 
mons rather sank than lifted up the hearts of their 
hearers." 28 So, too, Vincent's outcries against blas- 
phemy may have suggested to Defoe the sermon on the 
same text. However, all this was common to the ser- 

2 5 Among those Presbyterians who took up their ministerial duties 
again during the Plague were, Vincent, Allin, Chester, Franklin, 
Grimes, Turner, and Janaway (who died of plague). That there 
was a very strong feeling against the regular clergy for running 
away is evident on every hand. The Sancroft Correspondence 
illustrates this. On February 4, 1666, Pepys wrote in his 
"Diary," "The Lord's day; and my wife and I the first time 
together to church since the plague, and now only because of 
Mr. Mills his coming home to preach his first sermon; expecting 
a great excuse for his leaving the parish before anybody went, 
and now staying till all are come home, but he made a very 
poor and short excuse, and a bad sermon." It would be a great 
mistake and gross injustice, however, to suppose that all the 
regular clergy left their charges. 'Tis true, most did, including 
Bishop Henchman and Dean Sancroft; but some of the rectors, 
vicars, and canons stuck to their posts, such as Patrick, Clifford, 
Bing, Masters, Simpson, Morris, Portington, Griffith (who died 
of plague), Overing, Horton, Merriton, and others. 

28 Defoe had a splendid choice from which to reach this conclu- 
sion. Take for example, this reviving excerpt from Vincent's 
funeral sermon on Abraham Janaway, Sept. 18, 1665: "Look I 
do you not see the mouth of the pit open, and before it be shut 
again, you may be put in ; you see the righteous perish, but 
you are in danger of a far worse perishing; . * . . their souls 
are taken away by angels, and conveyed to heaven, but when 
your bodies drop into the grave, your soul will be dragged by 

[77] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

mons of the time, as well as to Defoe 's own time, and 
special sources for pious exhortations need not be 
sought. Solomon Eagle, as already pointed out, had 
his prototype in John Gibson, the 17th Century 
Quaker fanatic ; but Vincent might just as well have 
furnished Defoe with the substance of Solomon's exe- 
crations. Likewise, the penitent sinners, so frequently 
mentioned in the Journal, came directly from God's 
Terrible Voice. Indeed, an analysis of this book, as 
in the case of Loimologia, reveals the fact that Defoe 
made use of it for all it would produce : in no fewer 
than sixty instances in the Journal may we trace 
the origins to Vincent, and, as in the case of the 
materials borrowed from Hodges, there are many 
repetitions. As much of the materials of the Journal 
are common to God's Terrible Voice and Loimologia, 
mention here need only be made of the particulars 
with which Vincent, and only Vincent, supplied 
Defoe. The arousal of sinners to repentance has 
just been referred to. It is more particularly the 
aspect of the people and the desolation caused by the 
pest, so graphically portrayed by Vincent, that fur- 
nished Defoe with one of his chief assets. In God's 
Terrible Voice he found all that was necessary to ex- 
press the apprehensions and fears, the altered, scared 
looks of the poor people, especially after the rich had 
deserted the town and the order for shutting up and 
marking the infected houses had been issued; shops 
shut up, grass growing in the streets, few people 

devils into hell," etc. Oddly enough, however, this seems to 
have been the sort of thing the poor frightened creatures of that 
time hungered for and crowded to the churches to hear, re- 
gardless of the danger of the infection. 

[78] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

abroad; "not one house in an hundred but is in- 
fected, ' ' — a fearful slaughter, whole families dead, the 
church-yards stuffed full ; cries and groans of the sick 
and dying, the afflicted in their frenzy rising out of 
bed roar at the window or run forth naked into the 
streets, — one man burnt himself to death in bed. De- 
foe made use of all this over and over again, never 
failing to impress the awfulness of the times by means 
of pious ejaculations, borrowed along with the ma- 
terials from the sources. One of the many details in 
the Journal taken straight over from Vincent is the 
story of the wag who advertised a "pulpit to be let," 
after the minister had run away. Also, Defoe like 
Vincent, moralizes on that perennial quality in human 
nature, that during the calamity all differences of 
opinion were silenced — in the presence of the common 
enemy — but after the gravest dangers were passed, 
the old religious quarrels broke out again and people 
resumed the habit of their old sins. As in the case of 
Hodges, Defoe let nothing he could use from Vincent 
escape his net. 

The remention of Defoe's religious piety makes it 
necessary to dispel another myth respecting the 
Journal, or rather respecting Defoe. It will be re- 
called at once that Defoe, that is, Defoe's sadler who 
relates the story, was much disturbed as to whether he 
should remain in town, look after his business, and 
trust in God, or, like others who were able, flee to the 
country. 27 Like many another distracted person of 

27 It will be recalled that the sadler' s brother argued with him as to 
the folly of remaining and pointed as example to the predes- 
tinarian view held by the Turks to their undoing. The reference 
to the Turk in this connection was very common. Cf. Kemp, 
"Brief Treatise," p. 15, a copy of which Defoe owned. 

[79] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

that day, lie wavered now this way, now that, not 
knowing what to do. Finally, one evening after much 
worry about the question, he, as if by accident, or 
divine guidance, opened the Bible at the 91st Psalm. 
This settled all his doubts, — he would remain! One 
editor of the Journal, in an excess of devotion to De- 
foe's fertile genius, gives vent to his feelings in, 
"Nothing could be more natural than the account of 
the sadler's uncertainty whether he should leave Lon- 
don, . . . and when he opened his Bible he lighted on 
the words, ' ' etc. ' ' From that moment he resolved to 
stay, knowing that whatever happened he was in God 's 
hands. ' ' Well, now, it was rather necessary that De- 
foe should devise some means to keep his sadler in 
town — otherwise the narrative would have ended 
somewhat abruptly. Of course, any schoolboy could 
have had him remain without inventing any argu- 
ments about the business; but such a simple process 
would have branded the author as a novice, to say the 
least. Now, the "lighting on the words" gives distinc- 
tion and an air of naturalness to the narrative. As a 
matter of fact, nearly all the writers on the subject 
from the time of David onwards have gone over the 
arguments about fleeing the plague. One has but to 
open any book on the pest to learn this, — Beze, Gad- 
bury, Kemp, Patrick, Austin, author of Golgotha, etc., 
etc. As for the Psalms, they have always been re- 
sorted to for consolation in times of trouble in general, 
and in cases of the plague in particular. One author 
makes twenty-six biblical references in one connection, 
the list being headed by the 91st Psalm which re- 
appears three times (Golgotha, p. 14). C. Conraden 

[80] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

wrote a poem devoted entirely to that Psalm (1633), 
and Theodore Beze, in a Shorte learned and pithie 
Treatise (1580) treats of it in extenso in respect of 
fleeing from the pestilence. To come nearer home, we 
may dismiss the whole matter at once by referring to 
Symon Patrick's Consolatory Discourse (1665, p. 30) 
wherein he not only cites the 91st Psalm, but quotes 
that portion, and only that portion, repeated by Defoe. 
It would have been nothing wonderful if Defoe, with 
his knowledge of the Bible, had turned to the passage 
in question, but to credit him with lighting upon it is 
sheer nonsense. As we have caught him so many 
times red-handed in the act of appropriating materials 
for the Journal, it is safe to suggest that he took the 
quotation directly from Patrick, with whose writings 
he was well acquainted. This example is fairly illus- 
trative of the Journal as a whole, so far as it relates to 
Defoe's originality in creating the narrative of the 
Plague. 



[81] 



Ill 

That some slips and errors should have crept into 
a history of the nature of the Journal was inevitable. 
But these are comparatively few, generally of slight 
importance, and due, in nearly every instance, to haste 
or to misleading sources. I have already taken ac- 
count of some of these, and they need only be men- 
tioned here in way of summary. That there were 
printed newspapers in those days, Defoe must have 
been aware. Likewise, it would seem that he should 
have known that microscopes had been in use for a 
generation before the Plague Year. On the other 
hand, I have found no indication that they were 
brought into use in connection with the treatment of 
the distemper of 1665. It was, however, sheer care- 
lessness or haste that accounts for wrong dates and 
inaccurate statistics. For example, almost on the first 
page of the Journal Defoe mentions two Frenchmen 
who died of the Plague in Long Acre, or thereabouts, 
in December, 1664, and shortly afterwards says there 
was only one, a statement which he repeats. On the 
second page it appears that none died of the disease 
from December, 1664 until ' ' about the 12th of Febru- 
ary' ' following; near the end of the Journal the 9th 
of February is given. The same kind of carelessness 
if found respecting the number of pesthouses: in 
three places Defoe says there was only one, in another 
place he says two. The latter statement is correct. 
The number that died of the Plague at the Westmin- 

[82] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

ster pesthouse is given as 159, which should read 156 ; 
but this is evidently the proofreader's error. 28 One 
table in the Journal is misleading, namely, the one 
showing the number of deaths from August 22 to Sep- 
tember 26, 1665, which was 38,195. The impression 
left is that this represents the deaths from the Plague, 
whereas it represents the total number of deaths. De- 
foe should have added, "whereof 31,331 of the 
Plague." In one instance, his figures are entirely 
at variance with the Bills: in demonstrating the fact 
that many who died of the distemper were set down 
to other diseases, he records for 1664, "child-bed, 189 ; 
abortive and still-born, 458." This should read, 
"child-bed, 250; abortive and still-born, 503." For the 
week ending July 4, 1665, Defoe says that "not one 
person died of plague in all Stepney parish." The 
Bills returned two that week for Stepney. The fol- 
lowing week he estimated the number from plague at 
900; the Clerks reported 725. This is Defoe's only 
venture at an estimate of the number of deaths from 
the pestilence in a given week; his other figures are 
taken directly from the Bills. 

It has already been shown that the error in the 
Journal respecting the dates of the planet conjunc- 
tions was due to the fact that Defoe's authority 
(Hodges) did not indicate the years in which they 
occurred, and Defoe assumed that they both immedi- 
ately preceded the outbreak of the Plague. As to the 
movements of the Court, he was entirely at sea, — an- 
other slip due to Hodges 's indefiniteness. Defoe says 

28 In checking up errors in the "Journal" I have used the 1st 
edition. 

[83] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

that the Court removed to Oxford in June, and re- 
turned to town soon after Christmas. The newsbooks 
of the day furnish us with the exact movements of the 
Court. On July 2, 1665, Charles II and his suite 
went to Hampton Court (the Queen Mother went to 
France a few days earlier). They remained at 
Hampton Court until July 28. As a greater means 
of precaution, on that date the King moved towards 
Salisbury, first visiting Portsmouth and Isle-of- Wight, 
arriving at Salisbury on August 1. On September 15, 
Charles began a Royal Progress, in which was in- 
cluded, in order, Poole, Lulworth, Weymouth, Port- 
land, and Dorchester. The King returned to Salis- 
bury on September 21. The pest appearing there 
about this time, the Court hastily removed to Oxford 
on the 25th of the month. There Parliament was con- 
vened on October 9, and there the Court remained un- 
til January 27, 1666, when it came back to Hampton 
Court. Five days later (February 1) Charles and his 
followers returned to Whitehall, having been away 
exactly seven months. 

As I have already mentioned, the order to the 
College of Physicians was a royal command, and did 
not come from the Mayor as stated by Defoe. As to 
the good work of the Mayor and Aldermen, Defoe 
seems to have been obsessed with the idea that they 
must have scrupulously enforced all orders emanat- 
ing from them, such as keeping the street clean, bury- 
ing the dead, etc. As a matter of fact they accom- 
plished almost superhuman results, under the circum- 
stances and conditions of the times, but nothing so 
complete as Defoe asserts. In this connection he men- 

[84] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

tions charities (inasmuch as the Lord Mayor was 
largely responsible for their distribution) and states 
that £17,800 were distributed to Cripplegate in one 
week. This is the only instance of gross exaggeration 
I have found in the Journal. While the whole truth 
can never be known as to the amounts distributed to 
the poor during the Plague, as a great deal of money 
was sent to private individuals, rectors, curates, etc., 
of which no public account was kept, it is extremely 
doubtful whether all of the parishes of London taken 
together ever received as much as £17,800 in one week 
in charities. Defoe also asserts that the King ordered 
£1,000 distributed weekly, but I know not his author- 
ity. The City of London, however, did vote £600, 
and many of the parishes increased the rates heavily 
to meet the emergency. Even so, the contributions 
from all quarters fell far short of meeting the neces- 
sitous conditions, and after the distemper spread to 
the one hundred and thirty parishes of the City and 
suburbs it was precious little that any one parish re- 
ceived at one time. 

A few more scattering details will suffice to cover 
the remaining slips in the Journal. Defoe was not 
aware that the plague got into the fleet, simply be- 
cause every effort was made to conceal the fact ; hence 
his error in stating the contrary. 29 So, also, as to the 
army, he says, "as to soldiers, there were none to be 
found, ' ' etc. In a manner this was true, when we con- 
sider that the London of 1665 was not the London o£ 
1914-1919. They were quartered in Hyde Park in 

29 For proof that the distemper got aboard the ships, see "Cal. 
State Papers" Dom., December 25, 1665 and February 2, 1666. 

[85] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

tents, and returned to town on November 6, 1665. 30 
Again, Defoe erroneously states that the Exchange 
was kept open during the Plague. It was closed for 
repairs during August and September, 1665. 81 As 
for the impression we get from the Journal that all the 
astrologers were carried away by plague, a number 
of the leading ones, as Lilly and Gadbury, lived for a 
number of years after 1665 and continued their pre- 
dictions to the last. In a like manner, Defoe misleads 
us when he states that ' ' some of the ministers did visit 
the sick at first and for a little while, but it was not to 
be done;" from which we infer that after the infec- 
tion reached its height, they had to abandon their 
work. Patrick, Allin, Bing, Vincent, Tillison, and 
many others, stuck to their posts throughout, as I have 
already shown. A similar wrong impression is left as 
regards the fires that were built in the streets, in com- 
pliance with the Lord Mayor's order of September 2, 
1665. Defoe mentions only fifteen places where fires 
were built: the order provided for one fire to every 
twelve houses (i. e. six houses on either side of the 
street). 32 All discrepancies respecting the weather, 
winds, drought, progress of the distemper, etc., arise 
out of corresponding confusions in Defoe's sources; 
statements of this character were based by him on au- 
thority, and, besides, the element of error in these re- 
spects is so slight as to be virtually negligible. 33 

80 See letter from Symon Patrick to Elizabeth Gauden, dated No- 
vember 7, 1665. "Add. MSS." 5810. 

31 "Newes," Nos. 60 and 76. 

82 Cf. "Intelligencer" No. 72. 

33 As illustrations of similar discrepancies, see Thompson, "Loimo- 
tomia," 1666, p. 67; Boghurst, "Loimographia," 1666. p. 29; 
Withers, "A Precaution relating to the Present Time," 1665, 
p. 66. 

[86] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Of much greater importance than the trivial er- 
rors recorded above, is the question of style and 
method employed by Defoe in the Journal; for these 
have borne a considerable part in getting the name of 
fiction attached to the book. In the first place, of 
course, stands the very apparent fact that the narra- 
tive is in the first person. To descant upon the charm, 
the sense of reality, the c ' atmosphere, ' ' which this 
lends to the book would not only be trite, but alto- 
gether superfluous. Little artful tricks of style as, "I 
saw both these stars," "business led me out sometimes 
to the other end of the town," "I will not be positive 
whether he said forty days or a few days, 9 9 " I met this 
creature several times in the streets," etc., etc., grip 
the reader immediately, according to a psychological 
process appreciated by every one. Had the history of 
the Plague been written in the usual style of the 
dry-as-dust historian, the number of readers would 
have been comparatively small. 3 * This style had al- 
ready been mastered by Defoe, hence, it was applied to 
the Journal for reasons of convenience and taste as 
well as business. All that concerns us here is that the 
employment of the first person in the narrative in no 
sense interferes with the authenticity of the facts re- 
corded. I have already made mention of the story of 
the carpenter, sailor, and soldier, and have shown that, 
inasmuch as the integral parts of that story are true, 
the exception is only apparent, not real. The same is 
true of the stories growing out of documents, such as 

34 The continuator of Dr. Gideon Harvey's account of the Plague 
(as "City Remembrancer," 1769) compiled the work from 
sources and authorities (including the "Journal"), and, hence, 
is equally reliable as Defoe, — yet who reads Harvey's account? 

[87] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

the Orders, Proclamations, etc., — either the stories 
are authentic (I have quoted parallels) or else the 
documents are without meaning. Any one writing a 
history of the Plague of 1665 in the third person di- 
rectly from the original sources would produce a re- 
sult equivalent to, and in all essentials identical with, 
Defoe's Journal. That a history be written in the 
first person is not sufficient grounds for classing it 
with fiction: so far as authenticity is concerned, the 
style is of no importance whatever. Moreover, I have 
more than once pointed out that many of the best ef- 
fects in the Journal are not due to the first person, nor 
are they of Defoe's making, but are paraphrases or di- 
rect copies of the original sources. 

The most curious thing about the use of the first 
person in narrating the events of the Plague Year is 
not that such a style makes the book more interesting 
to read, but that it served to cover up the most egre- 
gious faults known to literature, — digressions, inco- 
herences, involved and cumbrous expressions, tire- 
some repetitions, — all of which made it possible for the 
author to compile a mass large enough to be called a 
book. A striking example of this is the " as-I-said-be- 
fore" habit, responsible for scores of needless repeti- 
tions in the Journal, as many as three or four — some- 
times more — of these appearing in the same para- 
graph, and all referring to the same thing. Innumer- 
able samples of this mannerism may be sighted by 
casually turning over the leaves of the Journal. The 
repetitions of discussions and comments regarding the 
progress of the Plague, treatment of the patients 
(shutting up, watchmen, nurses, etc.), work of the 

[88] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

officers, etc., are less obvious, because they are scat- 
tered about in paraphrase and altered expressions. 
So hard put to it was Defoe to make a marketable book 
that he is forced to repeat his stories. Thus Solomon 
Eagle is made to do service three times, as follows: 
(a) "I suppose the world has heard of the famous 
Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast. He, though not in- 
fected at all but in his head, went about denouncing 
of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner, 
sometimes quite naked, and with a pan of burning 
charcoal on his head." (b) "The famous Solomon 
Eagle . . . had predicted the plague as a judgment, 
and ran naked through the streets, telling the people 
it was come upon them to punish them for their sins. ' 9 
(c) "The famous Solomon Eagle, the naked Quaker I 
have mentioned, prophesied evil tidings every day," 
etc. The repetitions of expressions calculated to make 
the conditions of the times more realistic are too 
numerous to mention. "Dismal scenes," with its 
many variations, has been mentioned. The folly of 
people rushing back to town as precipitously as they 
ran away is condemned a half-dozen times in almost 
precisely the same language. He speaks of this fool- 
hardiness as "precipitous courage," "unwary con- 
duct," "imprudent, rash conduct," "rash and fool- 
ish conduct," "audacious boldness," etc., in each case 
repeating the consequences. 

How the pest originated in Long Acre and spread 
from thence is retold four times in the Journal. Even 
after he has almost concluded — or rather after the 
book should long have been concluded — Defoe starts 
over again "how it began at one end of the town." 

[89] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

The discussion of shutting up, with the good and bad 
effects attending the practice, occurs no less than ten 
distinct times, some of these involving as many as fif- 
teen or eighteen pages, not to mention the innumer- 
able repetitions within these repetitions. An account 
of the distractions of victims roaring at the window, 
running about naked, etc., appears sixteen times ; the 
alleged misrepresentations of the Bills of Mortality 
thirteen times; the good work of the Magistrates 
twenty-one times. The same kind of analysis could be 
applied, with varying results, to the other features of 
the Journal. These tiresome repetitions comprise 
two-thirds or more of the volume, and, after taking 
into account every addition of fact or feeling to be 
found in them, they might be reduced to one-fourth 
or one-fifth of the space they now occupy without ren- 
dering the value of the history less by one iota. The 
only purpose they serve — in addition to swelling the 
book's size — is to impress on the imagination the hor- 
rors of the Plague. Even so, the emphasis is so much 
overdone that it loses its force. Viewed from the 
point of style and art, the work is execrable. To make 
it perfectly clear that I have not exaggerated in this 
matter of repetitions in the Journal, I will here repro- 
duce a number of them in relation to the unconscious 
spreading of the disease by people going about with 
the infection upon them but they not aware of it. 
Other examples, as above, would show similar results. 

(a) " [Often, people escaping from shut-up 
houses], having an uninterrupted liberty to go about, 
but being obliged still to conceal their circumstances, 
or perhaps not knowing it themselves, gave the dis- 

[90] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

temper to others, and spread the infection in a dread- 
ful manner, as I shall explain further hereafter." p. 
84. 35 

(b) "Now it was impossible to know these people, 
nor did they sometimes, as I have said, know them- 
selves to be infected." p. 220. 

(c) " [People apparently well often had the con- 
tagion] really upon them, and in their blood, yet did 
not show the consequences of it in their countenances ; 
nay even were not sensible of it themselves." 76. 

(d) "And this is the reason why it is impossible 
in a visitation to prevent the spreading of the plague 
by the utmost human vigilance, viz., that it is impos- 
sible to know the infected people from the sound, or 
that the infected people should perfectly know them- 
selves." 76. 

(e) " The plague is not to be avoided by those that 
converse promiscuously in a town infected, and people 
have it when they know it not, and they likewise give it 
to others when they know not they have it them- 
selves." p. 221. 

(f) "Shutting up the well or removing the sick 
will not [prevent the spread of the distemper] unless 
they can go back and shut up all those that the sick 
had conversed with, even before they knew themselves 
to be sick . . . for none knows when, or where, or how 
they have received the infection, or from whom." 76. 

(g) "One man who may really have received the 
infection and knows it not, but goes abroad and about 
as a sound person, may give the plague to a thousand 

35 The paging refers to "Everyman's Library," which, by the way, 
classes the "Journal" as "fiction." 

[91] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

people, . . . and neither the person giving the infection 
or the person receiving it know anything of it, and 
perhaps feel the effects of it for several days after 
[when the tokens would appear] . . . and yet, as I 
said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor 
found themselves as much as out of order, till those 
mortal marks were upon them." p. 225. 

(h) "Men went about apparently well many days 
after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, 
and after their spirits were so seized as that they never 
could escape it, and that all the while they did so they 
were dangerous to others." p. 229. 

(i) "Fathers and mothers have gone about as if 
they had been well, and have believed themselves to 
be so, till they have insensibly infected and been the 
destruction of their whole families." p. 232. 

(j) "Many people having been well to the best of 
their own judgment, . . . for several days, . . . have 
been found ... at the brink of death, . . . and a walking 
destroyer perhaps for a week or a fortnight before 
that." 76. 

(k) "The schemes [for shutting up infected 
houses] cannot take place but upon those that appear 
to be sick, or to be infected ; whereas there are among 
them at the same time thousands of people who seem 
to be well, but are all the while carrying death with 
them into all companies which they come into." p. 233. 

(1) "The apothecaries and surgeons knew . . . that 
many people had the plague in their very blood, . . . 
and were in themselves walking putrefied carcasses, . . . 
and yet were as well to look on as other people, and 
even knew it not themselves." lb. 

[92] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

(m) "The infection is retained in bodies appar- 
ently well, and conveyed from them to those they 
converse with, while it is known to neither the one nor 
the other." p. 238. 

(n) "When people began to be convinced that the 
infection was received in this surprising manner from 
persons apparently well, they began to be exceedingly 
shy of every one that came near them." lb. 

(o) "I observed that after people were possessed, 
as I have said, with the belief, or rather assurance, of 
the infection being thus carried on by persons appar- 
ently in health, the churches and meeting-houses were 
much thinner of people than at other times before that 
they used to be." p. 239. 

(p) "When the physicians assured us that the 
danger was as well from the sound as the sick, and 
that those people who thought themselves entirely free 
were oftentimes the most fatal; . . . then, I say, they 
began to be jealous of everybody." p. 240. 

The foregoing extracts do not include several 
stories growing out of, or corollaries to, the statements 
of fact respecting the unconscious spreading of the 
distemper. Indeed, these are really not stories, but 
merely further repetitions of the known facts. It is 
this method of stating a fact as an experience of the 
narrator that has caused deception concerning the 
real nature of the Journal, and has served to cover 
up many of the repetitions. Concerning these repeti- 
tions, it is doubtful whether, without the minutest 
analysis, any but the most careful student of Defoe 
would ever dream of the wanton number he indulges 
in. A very close examination of the Journal dis- 

[93] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

closes how skilfully he has covered up both the pad- 
ding and the method of its accomplishment, by dis- 
tributing his materials, rearranging and recombining 
them in slightly altered garbs, as the statement of 
facts in the semblance of stories. A still closer exam- 
ination of Defoe's methods reveals the fact that when 
he takes his starting point for his repetitions from a 
given source, he repeats practically all that he has 
taken from that author. As his various sources em- 
phasize different characteristics of the Plague, it is 
easy for the ordinary reader to believe that Defoe, 
though repeating to an extent, is constantly present- 
ing new facts, new conditions, new aspects, new 
stories. Thus, the series of repetitions within repeti- 
tions serve to a large degree to conceal the process 
itself. It is doubtful whether Defoe was conscious 
of this, but, at any rate, it is his most striking accom- 
plishment in writing the Journal. 

Closely allied to, and abetting, this process of hid- 
ing endless repetitions in the Journal, is the digres- 
sionary method (or lack of method) which so fre- 
quently appears. Defoe began his history in a 
straightforward manner, copying directly from his 
printed sources. But he had not gone far until he saw 
that he must run dry before he had half a book. He 
therefore began to embroider upon his facts by cir- 
cling round and round them, digressing and repeat- 
ing, one time picking up an item here to start from, 
another time an item from another source, etc. Aiter 
printing the ' ' Orders conceived by the Lord Mayor, ' p 
this digressionary and circling process begins. It is 
relieved by an occasional injection of figures from the 

[94] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Bills, and illustrative stories, extracts from the news- 
papers regarding trade, etc., but, in the main, the 
genuine additions to the history of the Plague, after 
the first third of the Journal is past, are really very 
few until we come to near the close of the book, and 
even here we find much that has been recorded in 
earlier pages. No better example of the befogging ef- 
fect of Defoe's digressions can be found than in the 
manner in which he introduces his story of the sailor, 
soldier, and joiner. He first begins the story rather 
early in the Journal, but immediately rambles off to 
the great pit, wickedness of the buriers, cruelty of 
nurses, blasphemous tipplers, and church-going. 
Then he gets back to blasphemy again, thence to shut- 
ting up of houses, violence of watchmen, spreading of 
the Plague by the diseased victims breaking out, ob- 
servations on the cause of spreading the distemper, 
dismal street scenes, and private meditations ! It now 
occurs to him to introduce Dr. Heath, but he is imme- 
diately forced back to the cause of the spread of the 
Plague — as if he had not already discussed it several 
times — then more dismal street scenes, how the inhabi- 
tants managed to get their provisions, more melan- 
choly stories, cruel nurses and robbery stories re- 
peated, and so on, and so on, for over seventy pages. 
Then he bethought him of the three men who escaped 
to the country; but at once breaks off again and dis- 
cusses the order for killing dogs and cats. Finally, 
however, "I come back to my three men," whom he 
sticks pretty close to for about eight pages; then he 
drops them for a couple of pages to follow the prog- 
ress of the Plague about Wapping, Ratcliff, etc., at last 

[95] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

"to return to my travellers," which he does rather 
consistently, and concludes his story with only one 
further digression. After throwing in this rather 
long-drawn-out story in the methodless fashion I have 
described, Defoe could return to his repetitions with 
less chance of detection. It is altogether likely, 
however, that deception, in this respect, formed no part 
of Defoe 's intent, that the haphazard result was a gen- 
uine Topsy case. 



[96] 



IV 



From the foregoing thesis and from the ap- 
pendices to this discussion, it is abundantly evident 
that Defoe 's Journal of the Plague Year is a faithful 
record of historical facts, that it was so intended by 
the author and is as nearly correct as it was humanly 
possible to make it from the sources and time at his 
command. Such errors — few in number and slight 
in importance — as crept in, arose from faulty and con- 
fused sources, or from haste, and are in no wise at- 
tributable to bias on the one hand, or to imagination or 
style on the other. An analysis of the sources and 
facts available to Defoe, and a comparison of these to 
unpublished letters and other documents inaccessible 
to him, prove the soundness of this conclusion. There 
is not one single statement in the Journal, pertinent to 
the history of the Great Plague in London, that has not 
been verified during the course of this investigation, 
even to the stories related by Defoe, the originals of 
which, or parallels, have been discovered. 

From what I have written concerning the sources 
of the Journal, it is clear that these are of two kinds. 
In the first place, there are the printed accounts of the 
Plague found in Hodges 's Loimologia, Kemp's Brief 
Treatise, Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City, 
Thomson's Loimotomia, in Golgotha, and numerous 
other contemporaneous accounts of the Plague of 
1665; not to mention historical accounts of earlier 
plagues in other countries, as those of Thucydides, 

[97] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Baccaccio, Diemerbroick, etc., and those of Defoe's 
contemporaries, Mead, Pye, Quincy, Chicoyneau, and 
others. From these he got not only the facts concern- 
ing the origin, symptoms, and treatment of the dis- 
temper, but also the effects of the calamity on trade, 
on the appearance of the town and on the spirits of the 
people, as well as many illustrative stories. The 
newspapers of the times furnished him with the weekly 
Bills of Mortality, the progress of the contagion, 
weather conditions, movements of the Court, procla- 
mations regarding fasts, inhibitions of fairs in various 
parts of the kingdom, the building of fires in the 
streets in an attempt to check the spread of the disease, 
orders and prescriptions of the College of Physicians, 
the activities of the Mayor and Aldermen, advertise- 
ments of the quacks, the lists of charitable contribu- 
tions the alarms raised by the comets of 1664, together 
with the numerous interpretations of their meaning, 
accounts of other prodigies, stories about victims of 
the Plague, etc., etc. The newspapers, were a perfect 
mine of plague materials. The Bills of Mortality, 
prepared by the Parish Clerks, were also available in 
print as well as A Collection of Very Valuable and 
Scarce Pieces Relating to the Plague. This last was 
much used by Defoe. Almanacks and other printed 
prognostications and predictions were only too numer- 
ous. 

A second fruitful source that Defoe drew upon in 
writing his Journal of the Plague was his own mem- 
ory of the eventful happenings of 1665, and especially 
the many stories related to him by the survivors of 
the Plague. By survivors, I do not mean simply 

[98] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

those who were still alive in 1722 (of whom there must 
have been many), but also those who lived ten, or even 
five, years after 1665, when Defoe was at the greatest 
impressionable age to retain and appreciate the awful- 
ness of the calamity. Thus, for instance, there is no 
anachronic reason why Defoe should not have known 
personally — and in some cases for years — nearly every 
one of the authors of the printed sources mentioned in 
the course of this discussion. Of course there were 
scores of other survivors of the Plague from whom 
he could have heard the various stories which he re- 
lates. Besides, it is not to be forgotten that a disaster 
of such magnitude was no nine-days wonder ; it must 
have furnished the topic for the evening fireside for 
many a year after the event. All of this was revivi- 
fied and retold when the news of the Marseilles Plague 
reached England. Doubtless, many of Defoe's stories 
were first-hand; and, anyhow, it was unnecessary 
for him to invent any of them, — nothing could surpass 
the real facts, whether they were wanted for fiction 
or for history. 

Of the two kinds of materials used in making up 
the Journal, the printed are of chief importance. As 
I have already shown, these form not only the frame- 
work of the book but also the bulk of it : if it were di- 
vested of all other features, we would still have left 
an authentic history of the Plague, as fully demon- 
strated in section two of this essay. Defoe transcribes 
the facts without alteration or equivocation. Occa- 
sionally, when some mere theory (as of the efficacy of 
fires in the street, shutting-up, or other treatment of 
the contagion, is under discussion, he expresses an 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

opinion, a liberty granted to all historians; but even 
in such case, Defoe offers nothing new beyond his 
sources, the arguments which he adduces are to be 
found there. As for the hearsay stories and tradi- 
tions which he repeats, there is no reason to doubt 
their authenticity; there are many substantiating 
parallels. The fact is, Defoe was over-scrupulous in 
regard to these, often declining to vouch for them. As 
already pointed out, this has been a chief cause for 
classing the Journal with fiction. In the first part of 
this investigation appears a sufficient number of orig- 
inals, prototypes, and parallels to the stories in the 
Journal to justify their being classed as historical. 
All historical students know that two perfectly au- 
thentic histories may be written from incidents and 
materials differing slightly in externals but bearing 
internal resemblances that are unmistakable. More 
fully to illustrate this fact, I have quoted not only 
from sources with which Defoe was most certainly 
acquainted, but also I have drawn from books and 
manuscripts of which he could not have known. The 
results, to all intents and purposes, are identical, and 
for this reason we are compelled to class the Journal 
of the Plague Year with authentic histories. 



[100] 



Excerpts from the Original Sources of the 
Journal of the Plague 

APPENDIX A. 

From Nathaniel Hodges's Loimologia: or, An 
Historical Account of the Plague in London in 
1665: with precautionary Directions against the 
like Contagion, John Quincy, M. D., Trans. 
1720. 

The Plague which we are now to give an account of, 
discovered the beginnings of its future cruelties about the 
close of the year 1664; for at that season two or three 
persons died suddenly in one family in Westminster, at- 
tended with like symptoms, that manifestly declared their 
origin: hereupon some timorous neighbours, under appre- 
hension of a contagion, removed into the city of London, 
who unfortunately carried along with them the pestilential 
taint; whereby that disease which before was in its infancy, 
in a family or two, suddenly got strength and spread 
abroad its fatal poison; and merely for want of confining 
the persons first seized with it, the whole city was in a 
little time irrecoverably infected. Not unlike what hap- 
pened the year following, when a small spark, from an 
unknown cause, for want of timely care, increased to such 
a flame that neither tears of the people nor the profusion 
of their Thames could extinguish; and which laid waste the 
greatest part of the City in three days time : and therefore 
as there happens to be no great difference between these 
two grievous calamities, this mention of them together may 
not be improper; and the more especially, because by a 
like irresistible fate from a fever and a conflagration, both 
the inhabitants and their houses were reduced to ashes. 

But as soon as it was rumoured amongst the common 
people, who are always enough astonished at any thing 
new, that the Plague was in the city, it is impossible to 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

relate what accounts were spread of its fatality, and well 
were it had not the presages been so ominous; every one 
predicted its future devastation, and they terrified each 
other with remembrances of a former pestilence; for it 
was a received notion amongst the common people, that the 
Plague visited England once in twenty years; as if after a 
certain interval, by some inevitable necessity, it must re- 
turn again. But although this conceit, how well soever 
justified by past experience, did not so much obtain with 
persons of more judgment, yet this may be affirmed, that it 
greatly contributed, amongst the populace, both to propa- 
gate and inflame the contagion, by the strong impressions 
it made upon their minds. 

And these frightful apprehensions were not a little 
increased by the predictions of astrologers, from the con- 
junctions of stars, and the appearances of comets; for 
although but little regard was given to such things by 
persons of thought, yet experience duly showed what in- 
fluence they had with the meaner sort whose spirits being 
manifestly sunk by such fears, rendered their constitutions 
less able to resist the contagion. Whosoever duly con- 
siders it, can never imagine that this pestilence had its 
origin from any conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 
Sagitarius on the tenth of October, or from a conjunction 
of Saturn and Mars in the same sign on the twelfth of 
November, which was the common opinion; for all the good 
that happens during the like conjunctions is assignable to 
the same causes. 

The like judgment is to be made of comets, how terrible 
soever they may be in their aspects, and whether they are 
produced in the higher regions from a conglomeration of 
many stars, and returning at certain periods; or whether 
they are lower, and the production of sulphurous exhala- 
tions, kindled in our own atmosphere; for there is nothing 
strange in the ascension of heterogeneous particles into a 
flame, upon their rapid occursions and collisions against 
each other, howsoever terrible the track of such light may 
be circumstanced. The people therefore were frightened 

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OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

without reason at such things, and the mischief was much 
more in the predictions of the star-gazers than in the stars 
themselves: nothing however could conquer their sad im- 
pressions, so powerful were they amongst the populace 
who anticipated their unhappy fate with their fears, and 
precipitated their own destruction. 

But to pass by things of less moment, it is to be taken 
notice that a very hard frost set in in December, which 
continued three months, and seemed greatly to deaden the 
contagion, and very few died during that season; although 
even then it was not extinguished, for in the middle of 
Christmas holidays, I was called to a young man in a fever, 
who after two days course of alexiterial medicines, had 
two risings about the bigness of a nutmeg broke out, one 
on each thigh; upon examination of which, I soon dis- 
covered the malignity, both from their black hue, and the 
circle round them, and pronounced it to be the plague; in 
which opinion I was afterwards confirmed by subsequent 
symptoms, although by God's blessing the patient recovered. 

This case I insert, both to show that this season did 
not wholly destroy the distemper, although it greatly re- 
strained it; but upon the frost breaking, the contagion got 
ground, and gradually got out of its confinements; like a 
flame that for some time seems smothered, and suddenly 
breaks out with aggravated fury. 

As soon as the magistracy, to whom belonged the 
public care, saw how the contagion daily increased, and 
had now extended itself to several parishes, an order was 
immediately issued out to shut up all the infected houses, 
that neither relations nor acquaintance might unwarily re- 
ceive it from them, and to keep the infected from carrying 
it about with them. 

But whether this method proved of service or not, is to 
this day doubtful, and much disputed; but it is my busi- 
ness here however to adhere to facts, and relate the argu- 
ments on both sides with all possible impartiality. 

In order whereunto, it is to be observed, that a law was 
made for marking the houses of infected persons with a 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

red cross, having with it this subscription, LORD HAVE 
MERCY UPON US : and that a guard should there continu- 
ally attend both to hand to the sick the necessaries of food 
and medicine, and to restrain them from coming abroad 
until forty days after their recovery. But although the 
Lord Mayor and all inferior officers readily and effectually 
put these orders in execution, yet it was to no purpose, for 
the plague more and more increased; and the consternation 
of those who were separated from all society, unless with 
the infected, was inexpressible; and the dismal apprehen- 
sion it laid them under, made them but an easier prey to 
the devouring enemy. And this seclusion was on this ac- 
count much the more intolerable, that if a fresh person 
was seized in the same house but the day before another 
had finished the quarantine, it was to be performed over 
again; which occasioned such tedious confinements of sick 
and well together that some times caused the loss of the 
whole. 

But what greatly contributed to the loss of people 
thus shut up, was the wicked practices of nurses (for they 
are not to be mentioned but in the most bitter terms) : 
these wretches, out of greediness to plunder the dead, 
would strangle their patients, and charge it to the dis- 
temper in their throats; others would secretly convey the 
pestilential taint from sores of the infected to those who 
were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned 
miscreants from prosecuting their avaricious purposes by 
all the methods their wickedness could invent; who, al- 
though they were without witness to accuse them, yet it is 
not doubted but divine vengeance will overtake such wicked 
barbarities with due punishment: nay, some were remark- 
ably struck from heaven in the perpetration of their 
crimes, and one particularly amongst many, as she was 
leaving the house of a family, all dead, loaded with her 
robberies, fell down dead under her burden in the streets: 
and the case of a worthy citizen was very remarkable, who 
being suspected dying by his nurse, was beforehand stripped 
by her; but recovering again, he came a second time into 

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OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

the world naked. And so many were the artifices of these 
barbarous wretches, that it is to be hoped posterity will 
take warning how they trust them again in like cases; and 
that their past impunities will not be a means of bringing 
on us again the like judgment. 

Moreover, this shutting up infected houses, made the 
neighbours fly from theirs, who otherwise might have been 
a help to them on many accounts; and I verily believe that 
many who were lost might have now been alive, had not 
the tragical mark upon their door drove proper assist- 
ance from them. 

And this is confirmed by the examples of other pesti- 
lential contagions, which have been observed not to cease 
until the doors of the sick were set open, and they had the 
privilege of going abroad; of the same authority is the 
custom of other nations who have due regard to that liberty 
that is necessary for the comforts of both body and mind. 

It now remains that we take notice of all that is of 
any weight on the other side; as therefore it is not at all 
deemed cruel to take off a mortified limb to save the whole, 
by a parity of reason is the conduct of a community justi- 
fiable, who, out of a regard to the public good, put hard- 
ships upon particular persons; in a pestilential contagion 
therefore, what can be of more immediate service than 
securing those that are well from the infection? And the 
more especially in a disease that reaches not only the body, 
but taints the very breath; for in this case the infected 
breathe poisons upon the healthful, and even at the point 
of death endeavors to infuse that venom to others that 
conquered them. From this delirious pleasure arises those 
tricks of transplanting the corruption of a pestilential 
tumour to another; not to say anything of that woman, 
who with her importunities drew her unhappy husband into 
her embraces, which ended his life with hers. 

Again, to take away all doubtings in this case, I am 
not ignorant of what moment it is to shut up the houses of 
all those who are infected, according to custom; for by 
this means a contagion may at first be stifled, which other- 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

wise would go beyond any remedy; and with equal ad- 
vantage might gunpowder be fired, if too much time is 
not wasted in deliberation, before these things are put 
into practice. 

But if hereafter again a plague should break out 
(which God forbid), with submission to superiors, I should 
think it not improper to appoint proper accommodations 
out of the city, for such as are yet untouched in infected 
families; and who should continue there for a certain 
time; the sick in the meantime to be removed to convenient 
apartments provided on purpose for them. For by this 
means, that practice so abhorrent to religion and humanity, 
even in the opinion of a Mahometan, of shutting up the sick 
and well together, would be avoided. 

But to return: the infection had long doubtfully 
reigned, and continued through May and June, with more 
or less severity; sometimes raging in one part, and then in 
another, as in a running sort of fight; as often as the num- 
ber of funerals decreased, great hopes were conceived of its 
disappearance; then on a sudden again their increase threw 
all in dejection, as if the whole city was soon to be un- 
peopled — which uncertainty gave advantage to the dis- 
temper; because persons were more remiss in their provi- 
sions against it, during such fluctuation. 

It must not however be omitted, with what precipita- 
tion the trembling inhabitants left the city, and how they 
flocked in such crowds out of town, as if London had 
quite gone out of itself, like the hurry of a sudden con- 
flagration, all doors and passages are thronged for escape: 
yet after the chief of the people were fled, and thereby the 
nourishment of this cruel enemy had been in a great 
measure taken away, yet it raged still; and although it 
seemed once to slay as Parthians in their flight, it soon 
returned with redoubled fury, and killed not by slow paces, 
but almost immediately upon seizure; not unlike what is 
often seen in battle, when after some skirmishes of wings, 
and separate parties, the main bodies come to engage; so 

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OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

did this contagion at first only scatter about its arrows, 
but at last covered the whole city with dead. 

Thus therefore in the space of one week were eighty 
persons cut off, and when things came to extremity, all 
helps were called in; though it began now to be solely the 
magistrates' business, how to put a stop to this cruel de- 
vastation, and save some part of the city at last from the 
grave; first then therefore were appointed a monthly fast 
for public prayers, to deprecate the anger of heaven; nor 
proved it in vain, or were their supplications altogether 
fruitless; for if we have any regard to the temperature of 
the season, the whole summer was refreshed with moderate 
breezes, sufficient to prevent the air's stagnation and cor- 
ruption, and to carry off the pestilential streams; the heat 
was likewise too mild to encourage such corruption and 
fermentation as helps to taint the animal fluids, and pre- 
vent them from their natural state. 

The Government, however, to the duty of public pray- 
ers, neglected not to add what assistance might be had 
from medicines; to which purpose His Majesty, with the 
Divine helps, called in also all that was human, and by 
his Royal authority commanded the College of Physicians 
of London jointly to write somewhat in English that might 
be a general directory in this calamitous exigence. Nor 
was it satisfactory to that honoured Society to discharge 
their regards for the public with that only, but some were 
chose out of their number, and appointed particularly to 
attend the infected on all occasions; two also out of the 
court of Aldermen were required to see this hazardous 
task executed; so that encouraged with all proper means, 
this province was cheerfully undertaken, and all possible 
caution was used fully to answer the intention; but thig 
task was too much for four persons, and wanted rather the 
concurrence of the whole Faculty; we were however 
ashamed to give it up, and used our utmost application 
therein; but all our care and pains were eluded, for the 
disease, like the hydra's heads, was no sooner extinguished 
in one family, but it broke out in many more with ag- 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

gravations, so that in a little time we found our task too 
great, and despaired of putting an entire stop to the in- 
fection. 

Nor was there at this time wanting the help of very 
great and worthy persons who voluntarily contributed their 
assistances in this dangerous work; amongst the number 
of which the learned Dr. Glisson, Regius Professor at Cam- 
bridge, Dr. Nath. Paget, Dr. Wharton, Dr. Berwick, Dr. 
Brookes, and many others who are yet alive, deserve very 
honourable mention; but eight or nine fell in this work;, 
who were too much loaded with the spoils of the enemy; 
and amongst these was Dr. Conyers whose goodness and 
humanity claim an honourable remembrance with all who 
survive him. 

After then all endeavours to restrain the contagion 
proved of no effect, we applied ourselves to the care of the 
diseased; and in the prosecution of which, it may be af- 
firmed without boasting, no hazards to ourselves were 
avoided. But it is incredible to think how the plague 
raged amongst the common people, insomuch that it came 
by some to be called "the poor's plague." Yet, although 
the more opulent had left the town, and that it was almost 
left uninhabited, the commonality that were left felt little 
of want; for their necessities were relieved with a profu- 
sion of good things from the wealthy, and their poverty 
was supported with plenty. A more manifest cause there- 
fore for such a devastation amongst them I shall assign 
in another place. 

In the months of August and September, the contagion 
changed its former slow and languid pace, and having as 
it were got master of all, made a most terrible slaughter, 
so that three, four, or five thousand died in a week, and 
once eight thousand. Who can express the calamities of 
such times ? The whole British nation wept for the miseries 
of her metropolis. In some houses carcasses lay waiting 
for burial, and in others persons in their last agonies; in 
one room might be heard dying groans, in another the 
raving of delirium, and not far off relations and friends 

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OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

bewailing both their loss and the dismal prospect of their 
own sudden departure. Death was the sure midwife to all 
children, and infants passed immediately from the womb 
to the grave. Who would not burst with grief to see the 
stock for a future generation hanging upon the breasts of 
a dead mother? Or the marriage-bed changed the first 
night into a sepulchre, and the unhappy pair meet with 
death in their first embraces? Some of the infected ran 
about staggering like drunken men, and fell and expired 
in the streets; while others lie half -dead and comatose, but 
never to be waked but by the last trumpet; some lie 
vomiting as if they had drunk poison; and others fell dead 
in the market, while they were buying necessaries for the 
support of life. Not much unlike was it in the following 
conflagration, where altars themselves became so many 
victims, and the finest churches in the whole world carried 
up to heaven supplications in flames, while their marble 
pillars wet with tears melted like wax; nor were monu- 
ments secure from the inexorable flames, where many of 
their venerable remains passed a second martyrdom; the 
most august palaces were soon laid waste, and the flames 
seemed to be in a fatal engagement to destroy the great 
ornament to commerce; and the burning of all the com- 
modities of the world together seemed a proper epitome of 
this conflagration; neither confederate crowns nor the 
drawn swords of kings could restrain its phanatic and rebel- 
lious rage; large halls, stately houses, and the sheds of the 
poor were together reduced to ashes; the sun blushed to 
see himself set, and envied those flames the government of 
the night, which had rivalled him so many days. As the 
city, I say, was afterwards burnt without any distinction, 
in like manner did this plague spare no order, age, or sex. 
The divine was taken in the very exercise of his priestly 
office to be enrolled amongst the saints above; and some 
physicians, as before intimated, could not find assistance 
in their own antidotes, but died in the administration of 
them to others; and although the soldiery retreated from 
the field of death, and encamped out of the city, the con- 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

tagion followed and vanquished them. Many in their old 
age, others in their prime, sunk under its cruelties. Of the 
female sex most died; and hardly any children escaped; 
and it was not uncommon to see an inheritance pass suc- 
cessively to three or four heirs in as many days. The 
number of sextons was not sufficient to bury the dead; 
the bells seemed hoarse with continual tolling, until at 
last they quite ceased; the burying places would not hold 
the dead, but they were thrown into large pits dug in 
waste grounds, in heaps, thirty or forty together; and it 
often happened that those who tended the funerals of their 
friends one evening were carried the next to their long home. 
. . . Quis talia fundo 

Temper et a lachrymisf 
Even the relation of this calamity melts me into tears. 
And yet the worst was not certain, although the city was 
near drained by her funerals, for the disease as yet had 
no relaxation. 

About the beginning of September, the disease was at 
its height; in the course of which month more than twelve 
thousand died in a week. But at length, that nothing might 
go untried to divert the contagion, it was ordered by the 
governors who were left to superintend those calamitous 
affairs (for the Court was then removed to Oxford), to 
burn fires in the streets for three days together; yet while 
this was in debate, the physicians concerned were diffident 
of the success, as the air in itself was uninfected, and there- 
fore rendered such a showy and expensive a project super- 
fluous and of no effect; and these conjectures we supported 
by the authority of antiquity, and Hippocrates himself; 
notwithstanding which, the fires were kindled in all the 
streets. But alas! the controversy was soon decided, for 
before the three days were quite expired the heavens both 
mourned so many funerals, and wept for the fatal mistake, 
so as to extinguish even the fires with their showers. I shall 
not determine any other person's conjecture in this case, 
whether these fires may more properly be deemed the 
ominous forerunners of the ensuing conflagrations, or the 

[110] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

ensuing funerals; but whether it was from the suffocating 
qualities of the fuel, or the wet constitution of the air that 
immediately followed, the most fatal night ensued wherein 
more than four thousand perished. May posterity by this 
mistake be warned, and not, like empirics, apply a remedy 
where they are ignorant of the cause. 

The reader is by the way to be advertised that the 
year was luxuriant in most fruits, especially cherries and 
grapes which were at so low a price that the common peo- 
ple surfeited with them; for this might very much con- 
tribute to the disposition of the body, as made this pestilen- 
tial taint more easily take place. 

Nor ought we here to pass by the beneficent assistance 
of the rich, and the care of the magistrates ; for the markets 
being open as usual, and a great plenty of all provisions 
was a great help to support the sick, so that there was the 
reverse of a famine which hath been observed to be so fatal 
to pestilential contagions ; and in this the goodness of heaven 
is always to be remembered, in alleviating a common misery 
by such a provision of good things from the stores of 
nature. 

But as it were to balance this immediate help of 
Providence, nothing was otherwise wanting to aggravate 
the common destruction, and to which nothing more con- 
tributed than the practice of chymists and quacks, and of 
whose audacity and ignorance it is impossible to be alto- 
gether silent. They were indefatigable in spreading their 
antidotes; and although equal strangers to all learning as 
well as physic, they thrust into every hand some trash or 
other under the disguise of a pompous title. No country, 
surely, ever abounded with such wicked impostors; for all 
events contradicted their pretensions, and hardly a person 
escaped that trusted to their delusions. Their medicines 
were more fatal than the plague, and added to the numbers 
of the dead. But these blowers of the pestilential flame 
were caught in the common ruin, and by their death in 
some measure excused the neglect of the magistrates in 
suffering their practice. 

[in] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

. . . Nee lex est justior ulla 

Quam necis artifices arte perire sua. 

About this time a person of distinction and great 
humanity, going to France upon some affairs of State, 
heard that some Frenchmen were masters of the anti- 
pestilential remedy, and took care to send some doses of 
it over here. By command of {he Government we were 
ordered to try it with due caution, which we did with ex- 
pectations of uncommon success; but the mountain brought 
forth death, for the medicine, which was a mineral prepara- 
tion, threw the patients into their last sleep. May it never 
hereafter be enjoined to try experiments with unknown and 
foreign medicines upon the lives even of the meanest 
persons! For certainly nothing is more abhorrent to 
reason than to impose a universal remedy in cases whose 
curative intentions are different and sometimes opposite; 
and the various indications of pestilence require very dif- 
ferent methods of remedy, as shall hereafter be further 
demonstrated [in the Section dealing with the "Cure of 
the Pestilence"]. 

To this may be added that many common medicines 
were publicly sold, which by their extraordinary heat and 
disposition to inflame the blood could never be fit for every 
age, sex, and constitution indifferently, and therefore in 
many cases must undoubtedly do harm. On this account 
not only the sacred art, but the public health also, suffered ; 
yet we who were particularly employed in this affair as 
physicians, used all solicitations with the magistracy to 
restrain such practices in order to stop the ruin they ag- 
gravated. Hence, notwithstanding it was made a question 
whether in a plague, where so many physicians retire (not 
so much for their own preservation as the service of those 
whom they attend), it is not expedient for every one, ac- 
cording to his abilities, to do his utmost in averting a com- 
mon ruin? In the same manner as in a fire all hands are 
required, even of the crowd as well as workmen, to ex- 
tinguish it. 

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OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

But in this case my own opinion is determined: in the 
restoration of health, a person must proceed with more 
caution and deliberation than in the supposed case of a 
fire; for there are difficulties occur in the practice of medi- 
cine which are insuperable but by the unlearned; and the 
fine texture of a human body is not to be managed by as 
clumsy hands as the materials of a house; in the former, 
if a person makes a mistake, it is with great difficulty re- 
paired; and, therefore, upon a serious consideration of 
the whole affair, I cannot make any doubt, but it is much 
better to want physicians in such calamities, than to have 
the sick under the care and management of the unlearned; 
for such persons, like those who fight blindfold, know not 
in what parts to attack the enemy, nor with what weapons 
to do it; besides which, they are also in hazard of obstruct- 
ing these efforts of nature, which would many times without 
help, if not thus hindered, get the better of the distemper. 

Nor in this account are we to neglect, that the con- 
tagion spread its cruelties into the neighbouring countries; 
for the citizens, which crowded in multitudes into the adja- 
cent towns, carried the infection along with them, where 
it raged with equal fury; so that the plague, which at first 
crept from one street to another, now reigned over whole 
counties, leaving hardly any place free from its insults; 
and the towns upon the Thames were more severely handled, 
not perhaps from a great moisture in the air from thence, 
but from the tainted goods rather that were carried up it. 
Moreover, some cities and towns of the most advantageous 
situation for a wholesome air, did notwithstanding feel the 
common ruin. Such was the rise and such the progress of 
this cruel destroyer which first began at London. 

But the worst part of the year being now over, and the 
height of the disease, the plague by leisurely degrees de- 
clined, as it had gradually made its first advances; and be- 
fore the number infected decreased, its malignity began to 
relax, insomuch that few died, and those chiefly such as were 
ill managed. Hereupon that dread which had been upon 
the minds of the people wore off; and the sick cheerfully 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

used all the means directed for their recovery; and even 
the nurses grew either more cautious or more faithful; 
insomuch that after some time a dawn of health appeared 
as sudden and as unexpected as the cessation of the follow- 
ing conflagration, wherein after blowing up of houses, 
and using all means for its extinction to little purpose, the 
flames stopped as it were of themselves, for want of fuel 
or out of shame for having devoured so much. 

The pestilence however did not stop for want of sub- 
jects to act upon (as then commonly rumoured), but from 
the nature of the distemper its decrease was like its be- 
ginning, moderate; nor is it less to be wondered at that as 
at the rise of the contagion all other distempers went into 
that, so now at its declension that degenerated into others, 
as inflammations, headaches, quinsies, dysenteries, smallpox, 
measles, fevers, and hectics; wherein that also yet pre- 
dominated, as hereafter will be further shown [in the 
Section on "The Signs of the late Pestilence"]. 

About the close of the year, that is, on the beginning 
of November, people grew more healthful, and such a dif- 
ferent face was put upon the public, that although the 
funerals were yet frequent, yet many who had made most 
haste in retiring, made the most to return, and came into 
the city without fear; insomuch that in December they 
crowded back as thick as they fled. The houses which be- 
fore were so full of the dead, were inhabited now by the 
living, and the shops which had been most part of the year 
shut up were again opened, and the people again cheerfully 
went about their wonted affairs of trade and employ; and 
even, what is almost beyond belief, those citizens who be- 
fore were afraid of their friends and relations, would with- 
out fear enter the houses and rooms where infected persons 
had but a little while before breathed their last. Nay, such 
comforts did inspire the languishing people, and confi- 
dence, that many went into the beds where persons had 
died, before they were even cold or cleansed from the 
stench of the diseased. They had the courage now to 
marry again, and betake to the means of repairing the 

[114] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

past mortality; and even women before deemed barren 
were said to prove prolific, so that although the contagion 
had carried off, as some computed, about one hundred 
thousand, after a few months their loss was hardly dis- 
cernible, and thus ended this fatal year. 

But the next Spring, indeed, appeared some' remains 
of the contagion, which was easily conquered by the physi- 
cians, and, like the termination of a common intermittent, 
ended in a healthful recovery; whereupon the whole ma- 
lignity ceasing, the city returned to a perfect health; not 
unlike what happened also after the last conflagration, 
when a new city suddenly arose out of the ashes of the 
old, much better able to stand the like flames another time. 



[U5] 



APPENDIX B. 

From Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City, 1667. 

It was in the year of our Lord 1665, that the Plague 
began in our City of London, after we were warned by the 
great Plague in Holland, in the year 1664, and the begin- 
ning of it in some remote parts of our Land in the same 
year; not to speak any thing whether there was any signifi- 
cation and influence in the Blazing-Star not long before, 
that appeared in the view of London, and struck some 
amazement upon the spirits of many: It was in the month 
of May that the Plague was first taken notice of; our Bill 
of Mortality did let us know of but three which died of 
the disease in the whole year before; but in the beginning 
of May the Bill tells us of nine, which fell by the Plague, 
one just in the heart of the City, the other eight in the 
Suburbs. This was the first arrow of warning that was 
shot from Heaven amongst us, and fear begins quickly to 
creep upon peoples hearts; great thoughts and discourse 
there is in Town about the Plague, and they cast in their 
minds whither they should go if the Plague should increase. 
Yet when the next weeks Bill signifieth to them the di- 
sease from 9 to 3, their minds are something appeased; 
discourse of this subject cools; fears are husht; and hope 
takes place, that the black cloud did but threaten, and 
give a few drops; but the wind would drive it away. But 
when in the next Bill the number of the dead by the Plague 
is amounted from 3 to 14, and in the next to 17, and in 
the next to 43, and the disease begins so much to increase 
and disperse, [fears are again aroused]. 

Now secure sinners begin to be startled, and those 
that would have slept at quiet still in their nests, are un- 
willingly awakened. Now a great consternation seizeth 
upon most persons, and fearful bodings of a desolating 
judgment. Now guilty sinners begin to look about them, 

[116] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

and think with themselves into what corner of the Land 
they might fly to hide them. Now the prophane and 
sensual, if they have not remorse for their sins, yet dread 
and terrors, the effects of guilt, they could not drive from 
them ; and if by company, and carousing, and soft pleasures 
they do intoxicate and smoothen their spirits in the day; 
yet we may guess what dread doth come upon them, if 
they give but any room for retirement, and what hideous 
thoughts such persons have in the silent night, through 
fears of death which they are in danger of. Now those 
who did not believe in any unseen God, are afraid of un- 
seen arrows; and those which slighted Gods threatnings of 
eternal judgments, do tremble at his execution of one, and 
not the greatest temporal judgment. Now those which had 
as it were challenged the God of Heaven, and defied him 
by their horrid oaths and blasphemies, when he begins to 
appear, they retreat, yea fly away with terror and amaze- 
ment. The great Orbs begin first to move; the Lords and 
Gentry retire into their Countries; their remote houses are 
prepared, goods removed, and London is quickly upon 
their backs: few training Gallants walk the streets: few 
spotted Ladies to be seen at windows: a great forsaking 
there was of the recent places where the Plague did first 
rage. 

In June the number encreaseth from an 43 to 112; the 
next week to 168, the next to 267, the next to 470, most 
of which encrease was in the remote parts; few in this 
month within, or near the walls of the City; and few that 
had any note for goodness or profession, were visited at 
first; God gave them warning to think and prepare them- 
selves; yet some few that were choice, were visited pretty 
soon, that the best might not promise to themselves a 
supercedeas, or interpret any place of Scripture so liter- 
ally, as if the Lord had promised an absolute general im- 
munity and defence of his own people from this disease 
of the Plague. 

Now the Citizens of London are put to a stop in the 
career of their trade; they begin to fear whom they con- 

[117] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

verse withall, and deal withall, lest they should have come 
out of infected places. Now Roses and other sweet Flowers 
wither in the Garden, are disregarded in the Markets, and 
people dare not offer them to their noses, lest with their 
sweet savour, that which is infectious should be atraeted: 
Rue and Wormwood is taken into the hand; Myrrhe and 
Zedoary are taken into the mouth; and without some anti- 
dote few stir abroad in the morning. Now many houses 
are shut up where the Plague comes, and the inhabitants 
shut in, lest coming abroad should spread infection. It 
was very dismal to behold the Red Crosses, and read in 
great letters LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US, on the 
doors, and Watchmen standing before them with Halberts, 
and such a solitude about those places, and people passing 
by them so gingerly, and with such fearful looks, as if they 
had been lined with enemies in ambush, and waited to 
destroy them. 

Now rich Tradesmen provide themselves to depart; if 
they have not Countrey-houses, they seek Lodgings abroad 
for themselves and Families, and the poorer Tradesmen, 
that they may imitate the rich in their fear, stretch them- 
selves to take a Countrey-journey, though they have scarce 
. wherewithall to bring them back again. The Ministers also 
(many of them) take occasion to go to their Countrey- 
places for the Summer-time; or (it may be) to find out 
some few of their Parishioners that were gone before them, 
leaving the greatest part of their Flock without food or 
physick, in the time of their greatest need. (I don't speak 
of all Ministers, those which did stay out of choice and 
duty, deserve true honour). ... I do not blame many 
Citizens retiring, when there was so little trading, and 
the presence of all might have help forward the encrease 
and spreading of the Infection; but how did guilt drive 
many away, where duty would have engaged them to stay 
in the place? Now the highways are thronged with pas- 
sengers and goods, and London doth empty itself into the 
Countrey; great are the stirs and hurries in London by 
the removal of so many families ; fear puts many thousands 

[118] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

on the wing, and those think themselves most safe, that can 
flye furtherest off from the City. 

In July the Plague encreaseth and prevaileth exceed- 
ingly, the number of 470 which dyes in one week by the 
disease, ariseth to 725 the next week, to 1089 the next, to 
1843 the next, to 2010 the next. Now the Plague com- 
passeth the Walls of the City like a flood, and poureth in 
upon it. Now most Parishes are infected both without and 
within: yea, there are not so many houses shut up by the 
Plague, as by the owners forsaking them for fear of it ; 
and the Inhabitants be so exceedingly decreased by the 
departure of so many thousands, yet the number of dying 
persons encrease fearfully. Now the Countries keep 
guards, lest infectious persons from the City bring the 
Disease into them; most of the rich are now gone, and the 
middle sort will not stay behind; But the poor are forced 
(through poverty) to stay, and abide the storm. Now most 
faces gather paleness, and what dismal apprehensions do 
then fill their minds, what dreadful fears do there possess 
their spirits. . . , and the very sinking fears they have had 
of the Plague, hath brought the Plague and the death 
upon many; some by the sight of a Coffin in the streets, 
have fallen into a shivering, and immediately the death 
hath assaulted them, and clapt too the doors of their 
houses upon them, from whence they have come forth no 
more, till they have been brought forth to their graves; we 
may imagine the hideous thoughts, and horrid perplexity 
of mind, the tremblings, confusions, and anguish of spirit, 
which some awakened sinners have had, when the Plague 
hath broke in upon their houses, and seized upon near 
Relations, whose dying groans sounding in their ears have 
warned them to prepare; when their doors have been shut 
up, and fastned on the outside with an Inscription, 
Lord have mercy upon us, and none suffered to come in 
but a nurse, whom they have been more afraid of than 
the Plague itself; when Lovers and Friends, and Com- 
panions in sin have stood aloof, and not dared to come 
nigh the door of the house, lest death should issfre forth 

[119] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

from thence upon them, especially when the disease hath 
invaded themselves, and first began with a pain and diziness 
in their head, then trembling in their own members; when 
they have felt boiles to arise under their arms, and in 
their groins, and seen blains to come forth in other parts: 
when the disease hath wrought in them to that height, as 
to send forth those spots which (most think) are the 
certain Tokens of near approaching death; and now they 
have received the sentence of death within themselves, and 
have certainly concluded, that within a few hours they 
must go down into the dust, and their naked souls, without 
the case of their body, must make its passage into eternity, 
and appear before the Highest Majesty, to render their 
accounts, and receive their sentence: None can utter the 
horror which hath been upon the spirits of such, through 
the lashes and stings of their guilty consciences, when they 
have called to mind a life of sensuality, and profaneness, 
their uncleanness, drunkenness, injustice, oaths, curses, 
derision of Saints and holiness, neglect of their own salva- 
tion, and when a thousand sins have been set in order, 
before their eyes, with another aspect than when they 
looked upon them in the temptation. . . . 

In August . . . the people fall as thick as leaves from 
the Trees in Autumn . . ., and there is a dismal solitude in 
London-streets. . . . Now shops are shut in, people rare 
and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass 
begins to spring up in some places, and a deep silence al- 
most in every place, especially within the Walls; no rat- 
tling Coaches, no prancing Horses, no calling in Customers, 
nor offering Wares, no London Cryes sounding in the ears; 
if any voice be heard it is the groans of dying persons, 
breathing forth their last; and the Funeral-knells of them 
that are ready to be carried to their Graves. Now shutting 
up of Visited-Houses (there being so many) is at an end, 
and most of the well are mingled among the sick, which 
otherwise would have got no help. Now in some places 
where the people did generally stay, not one house in an 
hundred but is infected, and in many houses half the 

[120] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Family is swept away; in some the whole, . . . Now the 
nights are too short to bury the dead, the whole day (though 
at so great a length) is hardly sufficient to light the dead 
that fall therein, into their beds. 

Now we could hardly go forth, but we should meet 
many Coffins, and see many with sores and limping in the 
streets; amongst other sad spectacles, methought two were 
very affecting; one of a woman coming alone, and weeping 
by the door where I lived (which was in the midst of the 
infection) with a little Coffin under her arm, carrying it 
to the new Church-yard: I did judg that it was the 
mother of the child, and that all the Family besides was 
dead, and she was forced to Coffin up, and bury with her 
own hands this her last dead child. Another, was of a man 
at the corner of the Artillery-wall, that as I judg through 
the diziness of his head with the disease, which seized upon 
him there, had dasht his face against the wall, and when I 
came by, he lay hanging with his bloody face over the rails, 
and bleeding upon the ground; and as I came back he 
was removed under a tree in More-fields and lay upon his 
back; I went and spake to him; he could make me no 
answer, but ratled in the throat, and as I was informed, 
within half an hour dyed in the place. 

It would be endless to speak what we have seen and 
heard of some of their frensies, rising out of their beds 
and leaping about their rooms; others crying and roaring 
at their windows; some coming forth almost naked, and 
running into the streets; strange words have others spoken 
and done when the disease was upon them; But it was 
very sad to hear of one who being sick alone, and it is 
likely frantick, burnt himself in his bed. Now the Plague 
had broken in much amongst my acquaintance; and about 
sixteen or more whose faces I used to see every day in our 
house, within a little while I could find but four or six 
of them alive; scarcely a day passed over my head for I 
think a month or more together, but I should hear of the 
death of some one or more that I knew. . . . 

[121] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

In September the Grave doth open its mouth without 
measure. . . . The Church-yards now are stuft so full of 
dead corpses, that they are in many places swelPd two or 
three feet higher then they were before; and new ground 
is broken up to bury the dead. 

Now some Ministers, formerly put out of their places, 
did abide in the City when most of Ministers in place 
were fled and gone from the people as well as the disease, 
into the Countreys, seeing the people crowd so fast into 
the grave and eternity, who seemed to cry as they went, 
for spiritual physicians; and perceiving that the Churches 
to be open, and the Pulpits to be open, and finding Pam- 
phlets flung about the streets, of Pulpits to be let, they 
judged that the Law of God and Nature did now dispense 
with, yea command their Preaching in Publick places, 
though the Law of man . . . did forbid them to do it. . . . 

Now there is such a vast concourse of people in the 
Churches where these Ministers are to be found, that they 
cannot many times come near the Pulpit- doors for the 
press, but are forced to clamber over the Pews to them: 
And such a face is now seen in the Assemblies, as seldom 
was seen before in London, such eager looks, such open 
ears, such greedy attention, as if every word would be 
eaten that dropt from the mouths of the Ministers. . . . 

About the beginning of these Ministers preaching, espe- 
cially after their first Fast together, the Lord begins to 
remit, and turn his hand, and cause some abatement of 
the disease. 



Now the Citizens who had dispersed themselves abroad 
into the Countries, because of the Contagion, think of 
their old Houses and Trades, and begin to return, though 
with fearfulness and trembling, lest some of the after drops 
of the storm should fall upon them: and that many of 
them had not brought back their old hearts and sins, . . . 
Some return to their Houses and follow their worldly 

[122] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

business, and work as hard as they can to fetch up the 
time they have lost, without minding and labouring to im- 
prove by the Judgment, and God's wonderful preservation 
of them, . . . 



[123] 



APPENDIX C 

From Boghurst's Loimographia 
1665, pr. 1894. 

Almost all that caught this Disease with feare dyed 
with Tokens in two or three dayes. 

About the beginning most men gott the disease with 
fadling, surfetting, overheating themselves, and disorderly 
living. 

Tokens appeared not much till about the middle of 
June, and carbuncles not till the latter end of July, but 
were very rife in the Fall about September and October, 
and seized most on old people, adult, cholerick, and melan- 
choly people, and generally on dry and leane bodyes. 
Children had none. 

If very hott weather followed a shower of raine, the 
disease increased much. 

If in the heate of the disease the winds blew very 
sharp and cold people dyed very quickly, many lying sicke 
but one day. 



Shutting up of houses, wickedness, confident, ignorant 
mountebanks, overhasty cutting and burning sores, in- 
dulging too much to present ease, removeing servants and 
poore people to Pest-houses and to other houses in their 
sicknesse, overstifling and weakening people with too much 
sweating, overhasty going abroade into the cold, and pre- 
posterous Physick killed many. 

Though all sorts of people dyed very thicke, both 
young and old, rich and poore, healthy and unhealthy, 
strong and weake, men and women of all constitutions, of 
all professions and places, of all religions, of all condi- 

[124] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

tions good and bad, yet as far as I could discerne the dif- 
ference of the two, more of the good dyed then of the bad, 
more men then women, and more of dulle complexions 
then of faire. 

In the summer before the Plague in 1664 there was 
such a multitude of Ayes that they lined the insides of 
houses, and if any threads or stringes did hang downe in 
any place, it was presently thicke sett with flyes like a rope 
of onions, and swarms of Ants covered the highways that 
you might have taken up a handfull at a tyme, both winged 
and creeping Ants; and such a multitude of croaking 
froggs in ditches that you might have heard them before 
you saw them. Also the same summer the Small Pox was 
so rife in our Parish [of St. Giles in the Fields] that 
betwixt the Church and the Pound in St. Giles, which is 
not above six score paces, about forty family es had the 
Small Pox. 

The Plague was ushered in with 7 months dry weather 
and westerly windes. 

The Plague hath put itself e forth in St. Giles's, St. 
Clement's, St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and St. Martin's 
this 3 or 4 yeares, as I have been certainly informed by 
the people themselves that had it in their houses in these 
Parishes. 

The Plague first fell upon the highest ground, for our 
Parish is the highest about London, and the best aire, yet 
was first infected. Highgate, Hampstead, and Acton also 
all shared in it. 

The winds blowing westward soe long together from 
before Christmas until July, about 7 months, was the 
cause the Plague began first at the West end of the City, 
as at St. Giles's and St. Martin's Westminster. Afterwards 
it gradually insinuated, and crept downe Holborne and the 
Strand, and then into the City and at last to the East end 
of the Suburbs; soe that it was half a yeare at the West 
end of the City before the East end and Stepney was in- 

[125 1 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

feeted, which was about the middle of July. Southwark 
being the South suburb, was infected almost as soon as the 
West end. 

The Disease spread not altogether by contagion at first, 
nor began at only one place, and spread further and 
further as an eating spreading soare doth all over the body, 
but fell upon severall places of this City and Suburbs like 
raine, even at the first at St. Giles's, St. Martin's, Chancery 
Lane, Southwark, Houndsditch, and some places within the 
City, as at Proctor's House. 

This year in which the Plague hath raged soe much, 
noe alteration or change appeared in any element, vegetable 
or animall, besides the body of man, except only the season 
of the yeare and the windes, the spring being continuall 
dry for 6 or 7 months together, there being noe raine at all, 
but a little sprinkling Showre or two about the latter end 
of Aprill, which caused such a pitifull crop of Hay in the 
spring. Only in the Autumne there was a pretty good 
cropp, but all other things kept their common integrity, 
as all sorts of fruits, as Apples, Peares, Cherryes, Plums, 
Mulberryes, Raspes, Strawberryes ; all roots as Parsnipps, 
Carrotts, Turnips; all flowers, all medicinable Simples, etc., 
were as plentifull, large, faire, and wholesome; all graine 
as plentifull and good; all kine, Cattle, Horses, Sheepe, 
Swine, Doggs, wild Beasts and tame, as healthfull, strong 
to labour, wholesome to eate as ever they were in any yeare. 
Though many pedling writers have undertaken to find 
fault with all these things, and made people so fearfull and 
carefull of what they eate or dranke, or what they bought, 
of keeping Doggs, of eating Mutton, Pork, Fish, Fruitts, 
Rootes, Salletts, especially cherryes, were much exclaimed 
at, and cucumbers. Yet I believe very few people eate soe 
much fruit continually as I did this yeare, yet was not 
once sicke of any disease all the yeare. 

I commonly drest forty soares in a day, held their pulse 
sweating in the bed half a quarter of an hour together to 

[126] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

give judgement and informe myselfe in the various tricks 
of [the disease] : I lett one blood, gave glisters, though 
but to a few, held them up in their bedds to keep them 
from strangling and choking half an houre together, com- 
monly suffered their breathing in my face severall tymes 
when they were dying, eate and dranke with them, espe- 
cially those that had soares; sate downe by their bedd 
sides and upon their bedds discoursing with them an houre 
together if I had tyme, and stayd by them to see the man- 
ner of their death, and closed up their mouth and eyes 
(for they dyed with their mouth and eyes very much open 
and stareing) ; then if people had no body to helpe them 
(for helpe was scarce at such a tyme and place) I helpt 
to lay them forth out of the bedd and afterwards into the 
coffin, and last of all accompanying them to the grave. 



[127] 



APPENDIX D 

From Kemp's Brief Treatise 
1665. 

[The Plague'] sometimes begins with a cold shivering like 
an Ague, sometimes continues with a mild warmth like Hec- 
tick Fever or a Diary, and encreaseth with violent heat like 
Burning Fever. It corrupteth the Blood and all the hu- 
mours, it afflicteth the Head with pain, the Brain with gid- 
diness, the Nerves with Convulsions, the Eyes with dimness, 
making them look as if they had wept, and depriving them 
of their lively splendor, it makes the Countenance look 
ghastly, troubling the Ears with noise and deafness; it in- 
fecteth the Breath with stinking, the Voice with hoarseness, 
the Throat with soreness, the Mouth with drought, and the 
Tongue with thirst; the Stomach with worms and want of 
appetite, with hickhop, nauseousness, retching, and vomit- 
ing; the Bowels with looseness and the bloody Flix, the 
Sides with stitches, the Back with pains, the Lungs with 
flegme, the Skin with fainty and stinking Sweats, Spots, 
Blains, Botches, Sores, and Carbuncles, the Pulse with 
weakness, the Heart with sounding and f aintness. It makes 
feeble like the Palsie, it causes sleepiness like the Lethargy, 
watchfulness and madness like a Phrensie, and sudden death 
like the Apoplexy, And these symptomes happen not alike 
to all. 

The Turks are perswaded, that every ones fate is writ- 
ten in his fore-head, and hath a fatal destiny appointed by 
God . . . ; by which credulity, they slight and neglect all care 
of avoiding the infection, conversing with one another, and 
buying the goods out of infected houses, and wearing the 
apparel of them that lately died. . . . Multitudes have been 
executed by the Plague for this Heresie. . . . 

[1281 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

When the Plague begins to reign in any Place . . ., the 
Counsel of Hypocrates in advising to change and flye the 
corrupted air, is, and hath been received as an Oracle, . . . 
The Antidote made of three Adverbs, Cito, Longe, Tarde, 
Flie quickly, Go far, and Return slowly, hath oft-times 
proved effectual. 

And if any of those that will strain at a Gnat, and 
swallow a Camel, should pretend any scruple of Conscience 
about the lawfulness of this Remedy, in flying from In- 
fected Places, and say, out of envy, at the accommodation 
of others, or discontent that they are not so well provided 
themselves, or some secret design (as I have heard several 
express it) The Lord can follow and find them out; they 
may also understand, that it is not their desire to flie from 
his presence, but his Plague, not from their gracious God, 
but from his punishing and fearful rod. . . . But I shall 
leave these people as diseased in the Pate. . . . 

But now if through Poverty and lack of means to 
maintain you, and want of friends to receive and entertain 
you in better air, or having such Callings, from the attend- 
ance whereon, you cannot with honesty and good conscience 
absent yourself, but are enforced still to stay . . ., you must 
then strengthen your Bodies against the Causes of the 
Sicknesse. 



[129] 



APPENDIX E 

From Golgotha, or a Looking -Glass for London, 1665. 

Let me suppose the case therefore to their [i. e, the Col- 
lege of Physicians'] consciences: 

Whether, if four or five, or more of the skillf ulest and 
hardiest of themselves, who have given this advice [to shut 
up infected houses] as Orthodox, against so many thousand 
poor Innocents, were to be coobed up in one of the poor 
houses, whereout but one dyed, and with them an old 
woman, or some ignorant creature (a stranger to them as is 
usual) for their Nurse, and a sturdy fellow without with an 
Halberd (or some stricter Watch, as they have advised for 
others) to have each of them no more than the Parish al- 
lows ; and the Searchers, Chyrurgeons, &c. they have allowed 
to visit others, to visit them: if in a month or forty dayes 
after the last man of them dies, at such a season, so used, 
they do not think in their own consciences, with all their 
skill, their carcasses would all or most of them be carried 
away in the Night- Cart; which now (for fear thereof) are, 
many of them, got into their Country-Gardens, after their 
Epistolary Vapour and Cruel Direction aforesaid? How 
then may poor Women with child, Widows, helpless, friend- 
less, Fatherless, and sucklings, exposed (without such help, 
as many have been) and half dead before, it may be by the 
sudden death of their first dead visited relation, escape the 
ruin of such further violence upon them? 

Again, I query; If one in the Parish-Meeting-place 
fall suddenly sick or dye, after sitting there in the crowd 
two or three hours amongst the multitude; were it not as 
equal the doors should be shut upon the Assembly, or they 
in their several Houses shut up, as that some Families (who 
were further off from the single sick person that dyed 
therein) should be presently so violently used and exposed? 
surely, if we would not be so done unto, these wayes then 

[130] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

are unequal, and this violent course not like to abate our 
Plagues, but is rather a sign and earnest of further Wrath : 
And God (by leaving the Nation to be in love with such 
unnatural Advice) is, it's to be feared, paving a way for his 
Anger, in that more general shutting-up as a just Judgment 
on many accounts, prophesied of such a provoking City, 
Isa. 24, 10, 11, 12. The City of confusion is broken down, 
every house is shut up, &c. 

3dly. It's full of evil effects, to the encrease of 
Plagues, and that not only as it provokes God as aforesaid, 
but naturally distracts men, filling them with horror of 
heart, but those that are shut-up, and those that live daily 
in the fear thereof; Most that are shut-up being surprized, 
unprovided, unsettled in house and heart, needing then most 
the use of a sure friend, made for the day of adversity. Pro. 
17. 17. An Interpreter as Elihu speaks, Job 33. 23. one of 
a thousand &c. and are under soul-sinkings, and none to 
succour them; their hearts die within them, as Nabals, upon 
this bad news; not a friend to come nigh them in their 
many, many, heart and house cares and perplexities, com- 
pelled (though well) to lie by, or upon the death-bed (per- 
haps) of their dear relation, drag'd away before their eyes, 
affrighted children howling by their side, fitted by fainting 
affliction to receive the impression of a thousand fearful 
thoughts of the long night they have to reckon before re- 
lease, after the last of the Family, so dismally exposed, 
shall sink by degrees, one after another, in the den of this 
dismal likeness to Hell, contrived by the Advice of the 
English-College of Doctors: no drop of water (perhaps) 
but what comes at the leisure of a drunken or careless Hal- 
berd-bearer at the door: no seasonable administration being 
as a certainty then for their support, and innumerable evils 
of this sort incident thereunto: whereof if the ear of any 
concerned were opened to the cry of the Poor herein, I 
could (upon knowledge) instance and give plentiful proof 
of one months misery and ruine already hereby upon many, 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

enough to make the ears of every one that heareth tingle; 
and lay the blood of Innocents at the door of the Devisers 
and Prosecutors of this Barbarism; who also hereby bring 
no small consternation hourly upon the minds of those who 
are at liberty thoughtful (to terror) whose turn may be next 
to fall out of the oversight of their nearest Friends, into the 
hands of the Halberd, Searchers, and Chyrugion, all 
strangers to them, so as it may be plague enough to be 
haunted with, under such distraction and affliction. Hence 
(I say) are a thousand thoughts created, to such, swoond- 
ings, faintings, fears, (fitting for infection naturally) as 
have occasioned some already to lose their precious lives, 
and many have hardly escaped the effect thereof; who other- 
wise would not so dread the Visitation, that yet sink down 
and shiver now through fear hereof, but upon the sudden 
sight of a House shut-up, and clusters of little Children 
and tender ones in their windows, who might more ration- 
ally continue well by separation as they are able, or might 
be advised by a more charitable care of them, than by such 
miserable, noisome, melancholy, close imprisonment, which 
exposeth the Well (shut-up) daily to destruction, and also 
doth really but prepare a more unquenchable stench, and 
fest to wreak out of the windows (whilst so shut up) and 
disperse it self into the City by a more violent concourse 
to them at the window (though less to their relief) and by 
opening the doors (upon such choaking-up) for the 
Searchers and Bearers of the Dead (so daily more prepared 
for them) and other allowed Visitors, whose walks are far 
more perilous than twenty times so many left open to keep 
themselves clean and distant from the Sick and Dead, as 
else they would, to prevent their own infection. 

Yea, after the House is allowed to be open, and all that 
are left alive are well after this usage, both they and it are 
far more Dangerous hereby to others, than before, they 
were crowded up so long to such a nasty and infecting sta- 
tion, being the natural and artificial way also hermetically to 
effect the most forceable and noisome putrifactions, when 
the Embrio shal be unsealed; common experience having 

[132] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

proved it naturally less perilous to go to twenty visited kept 
sweet and clean, than to two so noisomly exposed. 

To which I may add, that many for fear thereof do 
hide their Sores, and, (after a Sweat or two) their Sick- 
ness also, and go daily about their business so long as they 
can stand, mingled to much more danger every way: Nor 
dare any do the office of a Nurse or Friend to those shut-up 
(nowever necessary for the present distress) till help can be 
procured (whereby some have been neglected) because it is 
so penal, that they must be inclosed then themselves, how in- 
consistent soever to their charge and business, by which 
there comes no small inconveniency to the Sick, who are 
forced to take any ignorant Nurse (or worse) in haste, to 
their great hazard. 

But lastly, I appeal to the experience of this and 
other parts; how apparently did the hand of the Lord rest 
(as the antient Citizens familiarly do observe) in the 
former great Plagues upon this City, when the people were 
wearied out of this oppression, under cause enough to 
mourn unto this day, over the cruelty every mercinary had 
opportunity to commit (as now) under colour hereof. 



[133] 



APPENDIX F 

From The Shutting up Infected Houses as it is practised 
in England Soberly Debated. By way of Address from 
the poor souls that are Visited to their Breth- 
ren that are Free. 1665. 

We [who are shut up] are acted by a Principle of self 
preservation, as well as you [who are fled and are free] , and 
therefore as soon as we find ourselves or any member of our 
Families infected, so dradful is it to us to be shut up from 
all comfort and society, from free and wholsome air, from 
the care of the Physician, and the Divine, from the over- 
sight of Friends and Relations, and sometimes even from 
the very necessities, and conveniences of Nature, that we run 
as far in City and Country as our feet can carry us, leaving 
Wives and Children to the Parishes, empty walls, and shops 
to Creditors, scattering the infection along the streets as we 
go, and shifting it from Lodging to Lodging with ourselves, 
till at last we drop in some Alley, Field, or neighbour Vil- 
lage, calling the people round about by the suddenness of 
our fall to stand awhile astonished at our deaths, and then 
take their own; each fearful man of us frighted from his 
own house, killing his whole Town by surprising them un- 
prepared; whereas were we permitted to enjoy the content 
and freedom of our Habitations, we might by Antidotes, 
cure others, and be cured ourselves. 

See, see, we infect not our next Neighbours, and this 
sickness spreads not much in any one place, but we carry it 
from place to place, running from our home as from our 
places of torment, and thus the Roads are visited, and men 
travel the same way to the Country, and to their long home : 
Thus the Contagion hath reached most places round the 
Citty, which is now as it were beseiged with the judgment, 
and encompassed with the Visitation and desolation: We 
have not learned how to manage a sickness, in all likelihood 

[134] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

did persons prepare themselves (upon the first breaking out 
of the Plague) with Antidotes to visit the sick, who would 
be very well contented to keep within doors, and converse 
only with their nearest Friends, (their Physicians and the 
ghostly fathers) and administer to them such preservatives, 
and other necessaries the Plague might go no further. 
•••••• 

This shutting up would breed a Plague if there were 
none: Infection may have killed its thousands, but shutting 
up hath killed its ten thousands. Little is it considered how 
careless most Nurses are in attending the Visited, and how 
careless (being possessed with rooking avarice) they are to 
watch their opportunity to ransack their houses; the as- 
sured absence of friends making the sick desperate on the 
one hand, and them on the other unfaithful: their estates 
are the Plague most dye on, if they have anything to lose, to 
be sure those are sad creatures (for the Nurses in such cases 
are the off-scouring of the City) have a dose to give them; 
besides that, it is something beyond a Plague to an ingenious 
spirit to be in the hands of those dirty, ugly, and unwhol- 
some Haggs; even a hell it self, on the one hand to hear 
nothing but screetches, cryes, groans, and on the other hand 
to see nothing but ugliness and deformity, black as night, 
and dark as Melancholy: Ah! to lye at the mercy of a 
strange woman is sad : to leave wife, children, plate, jewels, 
to the ingenuity of poverty is worse; but who can express 
the misery of being exposed to their rapine that having 
nothing of the woman left but shape? 

For another Argument [against shutting up] I alledge 
the mischief and sad consequence that may arise from the 
high fits of Frenzy, that usually attend this and all other the 
like Distempers; wherein the sick (if not restrained by main 
force of their Attendants) are ready to commit any vio- 
lence, either upon themselve or other, whether Wife, Mother, 
or Child. A sad instance whereof we had this last week in 
Fleet Lane, where the Man of the House being sick, and 
having a great Swelling, but not without hope of being al- 

[135] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

most ripe for breaking, did in a strong fit rise out of his bed, 
in spite of all that his Wife (who attended him) could do to 
the contrary, got his Knife, and therewith most miserably 
cut his Wife, and had killed her, had she not wrapped up 
the sheet about her, and therewith saved her self, till by 
crying out Murther, a Neighbour (who was himself shut 
up) opened his own doors, and forced into the house, and 
came seasonably to her preservation. The man is since 
dead, when in all likelihood (had he not by arising struck in 
the disease) he might have recovered. 

Add to this a serious consideration of the sad condition 
of Women neer the time of their Travel, (or newly de- 
livered) having neither Midwife to help them, nor Nurse to 
attend them, nor Necessaries provided for them, nor any 
friends to comfort them; and in this condition have contin- 
ually for their object their own poor innocent Babes newly 
brought into the World, either to be starved for want of sus- 
tenance, or poysoned by the Breasts that should preserve 
them. 



[136] 



APPENDIX G 

From Thucydides' account of the Plague in Athens, 

430 B. C. 

The season was admitted to be remarkably free from 
ordinary sickness; and if anybody was already ill of any 
other disease, it was absorbed in this. Many who were in 
perfect health, all in a moment, and without any apparent 
reason, were seized with violent heats in the head and with 
redness and inflamation of the eyes. Internally the throat 
and the tongue were quickly suffused with blood, and the 
breath became unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing 
and hoarseness; in a short time the disorder, accompanied 
with a violent cough, reached the chest ; then fastening lower 
down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits 
of bile to which physicians have ever given names ; and they 
were very distressing. An ineffectual retching producing 
violent convulsions attacked most of the sufferers; some as 
soon as the previous symptoms had abated, others not until 
long afterwards. The body externally was not so very hot 
to the touch, nor yet pale; it was of a livid colour inclining 
to red, and breaking out in pustules and ulcers. But the 
internal fever was intense; the sufferers could not bear to 
have on them even the finest linen garment; they insisted on 
being naked, and there was nothing which they longed for 
more eagerly than to throw themselves into cold water. . . . 
They could not sleep; a restlessness which was intolerable 
never left them. . . . Some escaped . . . [but] had no sooner 
recovered than they were seized with a forgetfulness of all 
things and knew neither themselves nor their friends. . . . 
Most appalling was the despondency which seized upon any 
one who felt himself sickening; for he instantly abandoned 
his mind to despair and, instead of holding out, absolutely 

[137] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

threw away his chance of life. Appalling too was the 
rapidity with which they caught the infection; dying like 
sheep if they attended on one another; and this was the 
principal cause of mortality. 



[138] 



APPENDIX H. 

From Harleian MSS. 3,784 and 3,785 

Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London, to Dr. William 
Bancroft, Bean of St. Paul's. 

The collection is to be for reliefe of persons and places 
visited with the sickness, the money to be gathered is to 
be sent in to the L. Maior for that vse: let the collection 
at S t: Pauls be as it hath vsed to be vpon such occasions. 
J haue sent to my Register to disperse the Books, and to 
giue notice to the Ministers to exhort the people to this 
charity. J shall be at White Hall on Tuesday. I haue also 
written to m r - Gifford to make such exhortation. J rest 
Your very affectionate Brother 

H. LONDON. 
June 17 [1665] 
To Reverend Doctor 
Sancroft Deane of 
St. Pauls 

London. 

George Davenport to Dean Sancroft. 

Aukland Castle, Jul. 1, 1665. 
J am very sorry to hear ye sad relation you make 
about the Pestilence. Wee are in great fear, it will be 
brought from London to Newcastle. 

Francis Wilson to Dean Sancroft. 

Corp. Xti Coll Camb. 
July 5, [1665]. 

S' 

We are now in that Condition here in Cambridge by meaius 

of this 2 d Visitation (wch is very sharp) y* we must of 

[139] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

necessity begg. J haue to this purpose made bold to in- 
close a letter to my L d of London, not knowing how to 
direct it in case he should be at Fulham, but desiring it may 
be speedily w th - him, which J doubt not to be effect [ed] by 
y r meanes. J know you will be ready to promote soe 
charitable a worke, 

8* 

Y r most affectionate Serv* 
FRA: WILSON 
To the Reverend & his hon r ed friend 
D r Sancroft Dean of S* Pauls 
London 
near S* Pauls 
In his absence to be conveyed to 
the Right Reverend father in 
g d the Bp of London. 

Bishop Henchman to Dean Sancroft. 
M r - Deane [Undated] 

His Ma tie - hath declared his pleasure that a solemn Hu- 
miliation shall be observed throughout the Kingdome: and 
hath commaunded my Lord of Canterburie that a Litourgie 
be forthwith prepared for that vse: whereupon his Grace 
requires you and me to consider of a Forme: which may 
soone be done for there hath been frequent occasions of 
that kind of Service: and there is no further labour for vs 
but to frame some Collects, all other parts may be vsed 
with little or no alterations. Jf you haue ready at hand 
any former Services be pleased to bring them with you here 
you shall find that of 1625. 1636. and 1640. Jf you can 
be here to morrow before dinner we shall finish the work 
before you goe away. The Lord preserve you. 

Your very affectionate 
Fulham: prsh. Brother 

Sti. Petri HUMFR: LONDON 

For Reuerend D r - Sancroft 
Deane of S*- Pauls in Angell 
Court neare S*- Gregories Church. 

[140] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Stephen Bing to Dean Saneroft. 

[London], 24 July, 1665. 
Reverend S r - 

M r - Iuett, Price Fisher Warner are out of Town & m r - 
Webb allmost, for he is not so often w th us as I wish he 
were. M r - Sub Deane, Masters Clifford & Quaterman whoe 
only speake of going out of Towne are dilligent & all so 3 
of the Vicars M r - Cockrey, Simpson, & Morrice th'others 
are out of the City. I intend God willing to keep close 
to his WorP- in the Church except great hazard should be- 
fall mee. D r - Barwick . . . resolues his continuance here, 
for any thing he knowes. The Lord in mercy look upon 
us: its said there willbe a great increase this week of the 
last bill w ch was 1089. its more in S*- Gregories then at 
your departure. & in an Alley in Pater Noster Rowe & a 
man & his wife fallen sick in the Petti Canons what the 
issue of it will be Thursday next will more informe yo u - 
. . . Wee haue the Prayer & Service performed [3 times 
a day] as you ordered & that in time & with a reverentiall 
decency & a comely congregacon considering the times fre- 
quenting those solemnities. . . . 

Hon ed S r - Your most Faithfull Servant. 

STEPHEN BING. 

Same to same. 

27th j u i V) 1665 

Sr 

People frequent y e Church as before excepting on Sundays 
and y e last Holyday on w ch wee had a Sermon & shall 
haue another on the Fast Day: The increase of Gods 
Judgm t: deads peoples hearts that trading strangely ceas- 
eth & bills of Exchange are not accepted so y* they shutt up 
their shopps & such a feare possesseth them as its wonder- 
full to see how they hurry into the Country as though y« 
same God were not there y* is in y e City so that those 
that are living and liued in y e great sickness time saw, 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

nor knew not y e like when there dyed 4000 a week. I 
pray God to p r vent a sad Sequel. Great complaint there 
is of necessity & needs must it be y e more when y e rich 
hast away y* should supply y e pores want. I haue been 
since the writing of my last lr: in sevrall places, being in- 
formed of some y* were shut up to be in a very necessitous 
condicon to see if it were so or no, & so finding them I haue 
been bold to extend yo r charity to y e outrunning y e bank 
you hon ed me with. . . . 

Your WorP s most humble 
& faithfull Servant 
STEPHEN BING 

Dr. Peter Barwick to Dean Bancroft. 

Lond. Aug. 3, 1665. 
M r - Dean 

Wee haue noe neighbours left in y e court [off Ave Marie 
Lane] besides a Goldsmith of my own trade, but M r - 
Fleetham locks up y e Avennues every night. We haue 
several houses infected in the Parish, and one of yo r - 
own out of w ch - M rs - gallson and one other are dead but 
God be thanked there is noe fresh house infected within y e - 
Parish these 10 days that I know of . . . . 

S r - yo r - humble servant 

PE: BARWICK 

These 
To y e Reverend D r - William 
Sancroft Dean of S*- Pauls 
at y e Rose and Crown 

at TUNBRIDGE 

Post pd 

Rev Stephen Bing to Dean Sancroft. 

3 August 1665. 

Reverend & right Wor 11 - 

[142] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

There are now but 3 Petti Canons left viz*- my 
selfe M r - Clifford & Masters w th 2 Vicars M r - Simpson & 
Morrice, the rest are out of Towne: M r - Portington lies 
at the poinct of death whose turne being to officiat this 
week J supply for none els would doe it except they were 
payd for it: Little mercy the Lord be mercifull to us; J 
wish it were as formerly w ch was not so in such case of 
necessity. . . . 

Your WorP s ' most humble & affectionate Serv*- 

STEPHEN BINGE 
Its s d - that my L. Bp- of London hath sent to those Pastors 
that haue quitted their flocks by reason of these times y 1 - 
if they returne not speedily others will be put into their 
places. 

Dr. Barwick to Dean Sancroft. 

Lond. Aug. 5, 1665. 
M r - Dean 

Give me leaue to discharge the part of a frend and to 
tell you what J haue thought perhaps of noe great moment. 
Jt will be noe news to tell you (for you will easily imagin 
it) that y e mouths of a slanderous generation are wide 
enough open against those that are with drawn both of yo r - 
profession and ours; but one of my neighbours told me 
(who J indeed think wishes well both to you and to y e 
Church) that it was wondered that you would goe, and not 
leaue any thing that they had heard of behind you for y e 
poor neighbours. J tould him that in what Cases it was 
lawfull to goe was not in the skill of every one to deter- 
mine ; but as for yo r - goeing to y e Wells you had resolved it, 
and by my advice, long before any plague was heard of, and 
as f or yo r - charity to y e poor J knew you had given a Con- 
siderable summe (to a Parish that a little money would 
not releeve) before you went. . . . 

Stephen Bing to Dean Sancroft. 

7*k August: 1665 
Reverend & right \Vor 11: 

[143] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

God hath been pleased now to encompas us w th his 
pestelentiall hand, in 3 places in Carter Lane, in Sermon 
Lane w ch - is next my house, in y e Lane at y e end of 
Knightriders street w ch - Leadeth up to yo r Co rt -» in Ave 
Mary Lane in the Buildings where y e Bp- of London: 
howse was & in an Alley in Paternoster row & on the back- 
side in y e Shambles w th severall besides in Christ Church 
parish in S*- Bennets Pauls Wharfe where its said died 3 
y e last night & 5 was buryed then out of S*- Gregories & 
others died; its s d - likewise to be in S t - Andrews in y e 
Wardrop : yet nevertheles under y e shadow of y e Almighty 
shall be my refuge until this calamity be overpast. . . . 
Your most humble & affectionat Serv 1 - 

STEPHEN BING 

These 

To y e Reverend & right Wor 1L 
Will m - Sancroft Doctor of Divinity, 
Deane of y e Cathedrall Church of 
S^ Paul London. 

Present. 
To be left at y e 
Rose & Crowne in 
Tunbridge. 

Same to same. 

10 August 1665. 

Reverend & right Wor 1L 

I haue sent yo u y e Thursdays Intelligence, half of w ch 
was in th'other sent on Munday w ch - I hope is receaued 
. . .; likewise y e weekly Bill w ch - is very sad; and y e 
more sad are our times y* neither calme nor storme will 
abate y e fury of monstrous spirits whoe in y e face of a 
Congregacon as at Pauls th'other day, will say these 
calamities are caused by y e Government in Church & State. 
The sicknes is break out in 2 places more since Munday in 
S*- Gregories one dwelling opening into yo r yard & 
th'other at y e left corner of y e Entry of our going into 

[144] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

y e Church; Its in Cambridg also of w<* I forgot to tell 
yo*- and whereas I told of 2 sick in ye Petti Canons, Its 
s d - the Husband died of a Consumpcon but ye wife lies 
sick of a pi: so as for other places infected in y e Parish 
I informed in my last. ... 

Your most humble & faithfull Serv*- 

STE. BING 
D r - Barwick y e constant frequenter of our Church some- 
times 3 times in a day remembers his service to yo r - worP- 

J. Tillison to Dean Sancroft. 

London August y e 10 th - 1665 
Reuend S r 



J have not heard from D r Pory since he left London 
nor do I know how to send to him though his mayd once 
took a resolution to abide by it; yet it seemes she is fled. 
... I doubt yo r wood will hardly be brought to London 
this somer for I doubt it impossible to gett a Boat to fetch 
it; yet I haue made it my businesse 2 days together to hire 
Lighters & can not gett any except one y* will not fetch it 
vnder 2 s y e Load heretofore y e Church gaue but 14 d y e 
Load. . . . 

Reuend S r 

Yo r faithfull humble S rt 

JO: TILLISON 

Same to same. 

August y e 15 th : 1665 
Reverend S r 

J hope y u will not take my simple well meaning amiss 
nor take it ill if J put y u in minde of our own Pish where 
there is all this tyme 16 or 17 houses vissitted, a great 
many of them poore & in want, & y fc some of y e Piahon" 
as J am informed (j beg yo' Pdon for my good will) doe 
alittle grumble yt yo« left nothing for y e poore when y« 

[145] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

went away. I Pceive since this, that m r Bing had y e dis- 
posing of some of yo r charity & J do not doubt but y* 
he will give y u an account of it. nor do J think it is yo r 
will y* any Ptiallity should be vsed in this case, it is very 
Pobable y* some neighbouring Pishes may stand in need, 
but J am sure y* y e miserable condicon of S* Griles'es 
Criplegate which is one of yo r peculiars, is more to be 
pittied then any Pish in or about London where all have 
liberty least the sick & poore should be famished within 
dores the Pish not being able to relieue their necessities. 
J had, not long since such a su[me] as yo rs to distribute, 
& where J knew not y e necessity of y e poore J pd a su[me] 
to y e Churchwardens & they to y e overseers of y e poore 
soe y* J had an account brought to how many Psons in 
each Pish it was distributed, but this is no rule for yo u: 
Yo r neighbour & Tenn* ffleetham has his health god be 
thanked very well, & though his mayd was reported to be 
dead with his child she is recoued & all y e family well. D r 
Barwick is very carefull of him & his family & of keeping 
y e gates duly lockt vp. I was lately att ffullham & my L d 
[Bishop of London] comanded me to let y u know y* 
himselfe & family are all in good health. ... J am not 
certain whether J shall remoue from this place or no. . . . 
J smoke yo r house twice a week, Tuesdayes & frydayes. . . . 
Yo r obedient humble S rt 

J. TILLISON 

Same to same 

London August y e 23 th 1665 
Reverend S r 

Yo r s of Satterday last from Ewell, J have reed. And as 
far as in me lyes have observed & done yo r comands. J 
have payd 40 11 to M r Daniell Keilway [Kelloway?], & 5 11 
to those of y e Choire to whom yo u directed mee, who re- 
turne theire humble service & thankes, & promise to con- 
tinue theire constant attendance in y e service of y e Church. 
J likewise payd 5 11 to y e Churchwardens of S* Gyles's 
Criplegate since yo r last to me, y e rest of yo r charity J 
hope m r Bing will give a good account of it. he had 5 11 

[146] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

of yo r last mony from me. Though yo r care could not 
have been more than it was for furnishinge me with mony 
to discharge those paym ts - w ch yo u ordered in yo r last, 
yet all those wayes failed every one. D r Barwick pre- 
tended yesterday y* he had not soe much mony of his owne 
to disburse p r sently, but att y e last (though alittle scrupled 
at first) he was willing to let me take 40 u out of y e Comon- 
stock & y* we intended to doe this morninge, but god al- 
mighty has ordred it otherwise, by strikeinge D r Barwick 
with so desperate sicknesse y* it was not fitt for me to goe 
to him, nor he in Condicon to be reminded of any such 
thinge. it seemes not one member but all the parts of his 
body beares a Parte in his sufferinges, neither riseinge nor 
botch e does yet appeare. a slow weake Pulse & faintnesse 
possesses him, his sweating is not much. Seeing this to 
happen it made me void of hope to effect my businesse, 
yea & danted me very much too. But after a little Pause 
J went to S r Robt Viners (there m r welsted's mony lyes) 
but could not receive one penny vnlesse J brought m r wel- 
sted's note. J am sorry m r welsted should forget his prom- 
ise, he is some where towards Vxbridge. 

Yo 1, Tenn* ffleetham dyed this afternoon. Kendrick y e 
Bellringer has languished since last Sonday we have some 
hopes this eveninge y* he may recover. Johnson yo r Bay- 
liff was buried last night. . . . 

Yor faithfull S* 

JO: TILLISON. 

Same to same. 

Sept: 14th. 1665. 
Reuend S r 

D r Barwick is past all appearances of danger god be 
praised. . . . The Sacrist is not att home & his wife is 
dead by y e comon disease. . . . Wee are in good hopes 
y* god in his mercy will putt a stop to this sad calamity of 
sicknesse. But y e desolacon of y e Citty is very great, y t 
heart is either steel or stone y t will not lament for this sad 

[147] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

visitation, & will not bleed for those vnutterable sorrowes. 
it is a tyme god knowes y* one Woe courts another, those y* 
are sick are in extream sorrow, y e poore are in need those 
y* are in health are in feare of infecon on y e one side, & 
y e wicked intentions of hellish rebellious spiritts to put vs 
in an vproar on y e other side, what ey: would not weep 
to see soe many habitaeons vninhabited ? y e poore sick not 
vissited? y e hungry not fed? y e grave not satisfyed? 
Death stares vs continually in y e face in every infected 
Person y* passeth by vs, in every coffin w ch is dayly & 
hourely carried along y e streets: y e Bells never cease to 
putt vs in minde of our mortallity. The custom was in y e 
beginninge to bury y e Dead in y e night onely, now both 
night and day will hardly be tyme enough to do it, for 
y e last weeks mortality did too apparently evidence that, that 
y e Dead was piled in heapes above ground for some houres 
together before either tyme could be gained or place to 
bury them in. The Quakers (as we are informed) have 
buryed in theire peece of ground 1000 for some weekes to- 
gether last past, many are dead in Ludgate, Newgate & 
X* church hospitall & many other places about y e towne 
w ch are not included in y e bill of Mortality. The disease 
it self (as is acknowledged by our Praction rs in Physick) 
was more favourable in y e begininge of y e contagion: 
now more feirce & violent — and they themselves do like 
wise confesse to stand amazed to meet with soe many 
various Symptomes w ch they finde amongst theire patients, 
one week y e gen r11 distempers are botches & Biles; y e 
next week as cleare skind as may be, but death spares neither, 
one week full of spotts & tokens; & Phaps y e succeeding 
bill none at all. Now taken with a vomitting & loosnesse 
& within 2 or 3 dayes almost a gen rlL rageing madnesse. 
one while Patients vse to linger 4 or 5 dayes att other tymes 
not 48 houres. & att this very tyme we finde it more quick 
then ever it was. many are sick: and few escape, where 
it has had its fling there it decreases where it has not been 
long, there it increases, it raigned most heretofore in Al- 
leys &c: now it domineers in y e open streets. Y e poorer 

[148] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

sort was most afflicted, now y e richer beare a share. 
Cap* Colchester is dead. ffleetham & all his family 
are clearly swept away except one mayd. D r Bur- 
nett D r Glover & one or 2 more of y e Colledge of Physi- 
tians w th D r Dowd w ch was licensed by my L ds Grace 
of Canterbury, some surgeons, Apothecaryes, & Johnson 
y e Chymist dyed all very suddenly, some say (but god 
forbid y* J should report it for truth) that these in a 
consultacon together, if not all yet y e greatest parte of 
them attempted to open a dead corpse w ch was full of y e 
tokens & being in hand with y e dissected body some fell 
down dead imediately & others did not out live y e next day att 
Noone. All is well & in safety att yo r house god be thanked. 
Brimstone, Vpon Tuesday last J made it my dayes work 
hops, Peppr & ± k mc ]]e fires in everv roome of y e house 

ff rftiikiriCfc?nse 

Sr: j vse to where J could do it. & aired all y e bed clothes 
roSnes 6 & bedding att y e fires & soe let them all 

with — lye ly abroad vntil this morning y e feather 

bed in y e back chamber was almost spoiled with y e heavy 
weight of Carpetts & other things vpon it. — J ame afrayd 
I have been too tedious & therefore beg yo r Pdon & take 
my leave who am 

(Reuend S r ) 
Yo r most faithfull humble ser* 

JO: TILLISON. 
Sam^ to same. 
Reuend S r October y e 12th: 1665 

J am afrayd y u will have a very slender account of yo r 
Tenn ts this Quarter, ffleetham, swinston & his wife, Gul- 
stone & his wife, & halfe a dozen masters of familyes are 
dead : w th many more in other familyes. . ' . . 
Yo r most obedient faithfull ser* 

JO: TILLISON 
John Overing to Dean Sancroft. 

London 2 d: Nov. 1665. 

Right Worp 11 

In right humble manner I presume to acquaint you, 
that y e Rectory of S» Mary Maudlins Old fishstreete in 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

London in your Worps guift is now void by the death of 
the late reverend divine D r: Matthew Griffith. J know 
that in duetie J am bound to waite on you in person, 
to giue you an account hereof, but by reason of the dainger 
of the times, and the unkindnesse of country people to 
Londoners, J cannot performe it; not knowing whether 
at this time it might be accepted by your worp. And there- 
fore in hopes of your worps pardon, J have writ these 
lines, humbly desiring your gracious acceptance of them. 
... J am incouraged to present this, my humble Supplica- 
tion, earnestly desiring that your worp will vouch safe to 
conferr the said Rectory upon your humble petitioner. J 
haue (Right Worp 11 ) supplyed the cure during all these 
times of sicknesse, and mortality; and shall yet (God assist- 
ing) w tn: your worps leaue take the same care of it upon 
me: hoping that your worp at your returne to London 
will grant this request of your humble Supplicant. J shall 
not further trouble your worp at present, but Subscribe my 
selfe* 

The meanest of yo r worps serv ts: 

JOHN OUERING. 

George Davenport to Dean Sancroft. 

Durham Castle Dec 4 1665 
M r Dean; 

.... In the first place, God be praised, we are all 
well. And I do not hear that any place either in the 
County or Diocesse is infected with the pestilence. . . . 

From a 

Petition of the Bev. Anselm Herford for the Bectory of 

St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish St. 

London, Decemb y e 9 th 1665. 
Most Reuerend S r 

Blessed be y e God of heauen it hath pleased his mercie 

*This is a sample of numerous applications made toward the 
close of 1665 for vacancies in the Church as a result of the Plague. 
One of these was written on a half sheet of paper as less 
preiudiciall fro an infected city." ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

[150] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

to preserue me Wonderfullie. When soe manie yea and 
soe manie ministers too are swept away. I lodged Jn your 
Worships rents [*. e. with the tenants] because I would be 
neere the praiers of S* Pauls & of y* familie J lodged with 
ther's not a soule aliue but it pleas'd god to giue me warn- 
ing before he graciouslie struck the fatall blow. . . . 

John Cosin, Bishop of Durham to Dean Sancroft. 
Durham Castle Jan r y 22. 1665 [-6]. 
M r Deane of St Pauls. 

The Sicknes in these parts thankes be to God is well 
abated though it lurketh still in some of our Quarter, for 
y 6 maintenance of those that have been and still are in- 
fected, wee have been put to lay a Sesse upon the Countrey 
so small were y e Contribucons of the severall Parishes 
throughout all my Diocess, but J have now good hope that 
upon the Account made me both of those Contribucons and 
Assessm ts: J shall be able to spare 50 u to be sent unto my 
Lord [Bishop] of London towards the help of those that 
are infected still in this City. J shall have y e Amount 
given me on thrsday and if J find so much money remain- 
ing J will return it to his Lordship by a Bill of Exchange 
to S r W m Turner by y e morrowes post, so wishing you all 
good health and hapines J rest 

S* 

Yo r very affectionate ffriend 

JO: D 

George Davenport to Dean Sancroft, 

Durham Castle. Jan. 23. 1665 [-6]. 
Sir; the business of this is to convey the enclosed, wch tells 
of money sent for y e poor of London, though the plague 
is again at Gatside, & this County hath been taxed about 
250 1 for y* place & others y fc have been infected. . . . 

V r humble Servant, 

G. D. 

[151] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Joseph Beaumont to Dean Saneroft. 
S r 

I purpos this day to acquaint our Vicechancell r with 
what you write touching y e D. of Xtchurch his charity to 
poor Cambr. Last week none dyed of y e Plague in y e 
Town; onely One at y e Pest House, but this week it has 
fallen into a new house in S. Clements parish, & one Woman 
dead of it. 

S. Peters CoU JSPH BEAUMONT. 

Febr. 1. 1665 [-6] 



[152] 



APPENDIX I 

From the Autobiography, and unpublished Letters 

of the Rev. Symon Patrick, Rector of 

St. Paui/s, Covent Garden. 

At the end of 1664 was a very hard frost, which lasted 
from Christmas till near the middle of April in the year 
1665, when the plague began to break out, a little after the 
breaking of the frost. The next month, May 13 th > I went to 
drink Astrop waters; where I stayed a month, and there 
met that great man Dr. Willis; who understanding that I 
intended to return to London, and look after my parish, 
was wonderfully kind to me, and directed me how to order 
myself, and often in the time of the plague wrote to me 
and sent me money to give to the poor. 

After a short visit which I paid to my father and 
mother, I returned to London in July, where I found the 
plague already broke out in my parish, notwithstanding 
which, I resolved to commit myself to the care of God in 
the discharge of my duty, and accordingly preached July 
23rd. when I had many heavenly meditations in my mind, 
and found the pleasure wherewith they filled the soul was far 
beyond all the pleasure of the flesh. Nor could I fancy any 
thing would last so long, nor give me such joy and delight, 
as those thoughts which I had of the other world, and the 
taste which God vouchsafed me of it. . . . About the middle 
of August I set myself to write a short exhortation to those 
who were shut up because of the plague, and just when I 
had finished it heard the melancholy news of my father's 
death, on the 15th ; upon which I wrote a letter to comfort 
my mother, wherewith I much comforted myself; . . . And 
on the 30th. I thought of writing a little treatise of com- 
fort in this sad time, which I finished and sent to my 
bookseller September the first, praying the blessing of 

[153] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Heaven might attend upon these my little labours for the 
good of souls. 

On the 3rd my brother was taken very ill, and vomited 
forty or fifty times, and my servant also had a swelled face, 
and I myself also had a sore pain in my leg, which broke my 
sleep, and made me suspect some touch of the plague, 
which was now come to its height, there dying ten thou- 
sand in one week. But blessed be God all these maladies 
went over without danger. On the 9th I set myself to 
consider the great goodness of God to me since this plague, 
and how many dangers I had been in by people coming to 
speak to me out of infected houses, and by my going to 
those houses to give them money, which was sent to me by 
charitable persons to distribute to them in need. Particu- 
larly Sir William Jones sent me fifty pounds, and many 
other things which I have noted in a little book, but shall 
now [not?] here rehearse. One thing I cannot but remem- 
ber, that preaching a funeral sermon at Battersea, I was 
desired to let a gentleman come back to London in a coach 
which I had hired to wait upon me. The gentleman proved 
an apothecary, who entertained me all the way home with a 
relation of all the many people he had visited, who had the 
plague, how they were affected, with the nature of their 
swellings and sores. But blessed be God, I was not in the 
least affrighted, but let him go on, without any conceit that 
he might infect me. 

My poor clerk, a very honest man, found his house in- 
fected, and acquainted me with it. I was so pitiful as to 
bid him come out of the house himself, and attend his busi- 
ness, and I should not be afraid of him. He did so, and 
his wife and child died of the plague ; but he was preserved, 
and had a thankful remembrance of my kindness to his 
dying day, many years after. 

On the 15th of October I preached a sermon, (when 
the plague began to abate very much) of the remembrance 
we ought to have of the time of affliction, when God restores 
to prosperity. It was upon consideration of Psalm xxxviii, 
whose title is 'a Psalm to bring to remembrance; 7 wherein 

[154] 






OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

I wished them to set down in writing all that they found ob- 
servable in the late time of danger; their thoughts, their 
promises and vows, their good resolutions, &c, and to write 
at the head of them, 'A meditation to bring to remembrance.' 
And accordingly I noted how good God had been to myself, 
not only in preserving my life, but giving so much health, 
and enabling me with cheerfulness to go through my 
labours; resolving to do my duty still more faithfully for 
the time to come. 

— From the Autobiography of Symon Patrick, pp. 51-56. 
From the unpublished correspondence between 
Symon Patrick and Elizabeth Gauden.* 
Add. Mss. 5,810. 

Covent Gard Wednesd Morn: 
Aug: 8. 1665. 

If you think there is any Danger from these Papers, 
which you receive, the Fire, I suppose, will expell it, if you 
let them see it before they come to your Hands. . . . 
For Mrs. Gauden S. P. 

at Hutton-Hall in Essex, these. 
Same to same. 

Sat: Sept: 8. 1665. 

It was a lovely Season yesterday, & we hoped for some 
sweete cleare Weather: but it please God, the Wind is 
changed againe, & brings Abundance of Raine with it : & in- 
deed we have no settled Weather since I saw you, which hath 
made the Sicknesse, I believe, rage more: for South Winds 
are alwayes observed to be bad in such Times: & the Wind 
stays not long out of that Quarter. It decreases in some 
Places, & grows very much in others. I hope there will not 
so many dye here [in St. Pauls, C. G.] as did last week; & 
yet we have 21 or 22 dead already. I suppose you think I 

* I am not certain whether this Mrs. Gauden was wife of Dr. J. 
Gauden (then minister at Booking in Essex, and afterwards 
Archbishop of Canterbury), or Sir Denis Gauden of the Victual- 
ling Office. There are two conflicting opinions on the first 1« af 
of the MS. volume containing these letters. 

[155] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

intend to stay here still ; though I understand by your Ques- 
tion you would not have mee. But, my Friend, what am I 
better than another? Somebody must stay here: and is it- 
fit I should set such a value upon myself, as my going away, 
& leaving another will signify? For it will, in effect be to 
say, That I am too good to be lost, but is no matter if an- 
other bee. Truly I do not think myself so considerable to 
the World: & though my Friends set a great Price upon 
mee, yet that Temptation hath not yet made me of that 
Mind : and I know their Love makes me pass for more with 
them then I am worth. When I mention that Word, Love, 
I confesse, it moves me much, & I have a great Passion for 
them, & wish I might live to embrace them once again : but 
I must not take any undue Courses to satisfye this Passion, 
which is but too strong in mee. I must let Reason prevaille, 
& stay with my Charge, which I take hitherto to be my 
Duty, whatever come. I cannot tell what Good wee do 
their Soules, though I preach to those who are well, and 
write to those who are ill, ( I mean print little Papers for 
them, which yet are too big to send by the Post ; ) but I am 
sure, while I stay here, I shall do Good to their Bodies, 
& perhaps save some from perishing; which I look upon as 
a considerable End of my continuing. My dear Friend, do 
not take it ill, that I cannot comply with your Desire on this 
Thing; you see what sways mee, & I know that you will 
yield to it, & that it ought to be stronger then the Love of 
you. If you can convince mee, that I may, with a good 
Conscience, go, you may think it will be acceptable: but I 
know not upon what Grounds you will make it good. Try, 
if you have a mind. But if I should go, why would you 
have me be at Clapham, when my Brother is so neare, & you 
are not there? . . . Perhaps you meane, that I should be 
there on Week Dayes, and preach here on Lords Dayes. 
But that will be dangerous perhaps both to them & to mee : 
at least to them : & I have not hitherto layne out one Night 
since you left Clapham. . . . May I not buy a Paire of 
Stockins, of a Friend, whom I can be confident is not in- 
fected, & which have layne long in his Shop f I want nothing 

[156] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

else at present. And how should it be more dangerous then 
to receive Bear & Wine, the Vessells being capable of Infec- 
tion? but especially Bread, they say, is the most attractive 
of it, which I am forced to buy : for I know not otherwayes 
to have it. I saw last Tuesday about 30 People in the 
Strand, with white Sticks in their Hands, & the D r of the 
Pest House walking in his gowne before them. The first 
Woman rid on a Horse, & had a Paper Flag on top of her 
Stick, with Laus Deo written on it. They were going to 
the Iustices, being poore People sent thither, & recovered by 
Jnm of the Plague. He seemed to take no small Content in 
his stately March before them. But now I have told Tales 
of myself, & confessed that I go sometimes Abroad. In- 
deed, it cannot be well helpt, & I hope there is no great 
Danger. I will not grow bold, & confident by being safe so 
long, nor would I grow timorous, as such Case as you re- 
quire, I doubt, will make mee. I saw a Letter from Salis- 
bury of the 6 Instant, which saith, now the Plague has 
broke out there, & his Majesty will be gone suddenly. He 
hath not been well of late, and imagines that Aire doth not 
agree with him. This is true : for it comes from one of my 
Parish there, who is well acquainted att the Court. Now I 
must make and End, & only add my hearty Love to all with 
you, & your Friends, praying for your Preservation, & re- 
maining y rs most affectionately 

S. P. 

I forgot to tell you, that instead of the Plague Drink you 
writ of, they have sent me Plague Water, or some such 
Thing; for it is distilled & nothing like what I had before: 
but never trouble them to send me any. D T Michael 
Thwayle directed to make, & drink presently of London 
Treacle & Lady Allen's Water. I bought both presently, 
but forgot to mix them. Only now and then I take a little 
Treacle. 

For my Honoured Friend 

Mrs Gauden att Hutton-Hall. 

Leave this at the White Hart in Burntwood, Essex. 

[157] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Same to same. 

Sat: Night. Sept: 30. 1665. 
My Friend. 

You enquire what Ministers are dead? for you heard of 
some & would know the Truth. There are more, to tell you 
plainly, then the Number you name. M r - Peachall, & M T - 
Mandrill, who were lecturers, dyed a good while ago: one 
of them Lecturer of S i - Clement's, the other at Benet Fink. 
Since, there dyed one M T - Austin, minister, I think, of S t - 
Mary Stainings: the minister of Alphage, whose Name, I 
think, was M T - Stone. One M T - Bast wick, (son to the fa- 
mous Doctor of that Name) who was Preacher at the 
Counter in the Poultrye; M T - Welbank, one of the ministers 
of S*" Saviour's, Southwark: M T - Throchmorton, Curate of 
S 1 ' George's, Southwark: & sl Gentleman who officiated for 
M r - Hall in Bastshaw. All these I can call to mind; and the 
mention of this last, whos Name, I think, was Phillips, 
brings a sad story to my mind, which I will relate, because 
something depends upon it which I ought to remember. On 
Tuesday was Fortnight, I was at D r - Owtram , s, & M T - Bast- 
wick, whom I spake of, came in, whom I never saw before, 
and the Doctor not often. He came to make a Visit, but the 
D r - has no Acquaintance with him, only had met him at a 
Friend's. He had all the Newes of the Towne, & particu- 
larly told us of the death of that Gentleman who supplied 
M r - Hall's Place. He was left in Trust to pay him his Money 
every Munday ; & he told us how timourous he was, & care- 
full, that he would scarce come into his House to receive it : 
& that he preached the Sunday sennight before, but was 
dead, with his wife, & all his Children (which were 3) before 
Thursday Night. The next Time I met D r - Out ram, he told 
mee, that M T - Bastwick went from us Home, & fell sick that 
very night, & dyed a few Days after, I think on Sunday. 
The D T - added, that he did not like his looks then, & thought 
there was a great Alteration in his Countenance; but he said 
nothing to me when he was gone, (which was about 5 
o'Clock) though to his Man he gave a Charge (as he tells 

[158] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

me) that if he came againe, he should not let him in, but say, 
he could not be spoken withall. You see how much wee are 
beholden to God in keeping us from the Dangers to which 
we are exposed. M r - Lance in Lombard Street also is dead 
lately, but not of the Sicknesse. The minister of Kentish 
Town hath had it, & is recovered. I think I have heard of 
another or two, that were Curates but of no more Ministers, 
The last Weeke gave us great Encouragement to hope for 
the Restoration of better Health : but I am something afraid 
this Week will raise it againe alittle : for wee have 15 or 16 
dead already, and had but 19 last Weeke in all. It is fit 
perhaps that it should be so, least men impute all to the 
cold weather, & nothing to God's Goodnesse. The more in- 
scrutable this Disease is, & beyond the Account of Men, 
the more are they directed to acknowledge a supreme Power 
that chastises men, & corrects their Disobedience. There 
are People who rely upon pitifull Things, as containe 
Tokens of its goeing away shortly. I have been told, more 
then once, of the falling out of the Clapper of the great Bell 
at Westminster, which they say, it did before the last Great 
Plague ended : & this they take for a very comfortable Sign. 
Others speake of the Dawes more frequenting the Pallace 
& Abbey, which, if true, is a better Sign, supposing the Aire 
to have been infected. For the Bookes I read tell mee, that 
the goeinge away of Birds is the Forerunner of the Plague, 
& that one shall see few in a Plague Yeare. The Death of 
Birds in Houses when they are caged, ordinarily preceedes 
the Death of the Inhabitants : for these aiery Creatures feale 
the Alteration in that Element sooner then wee. Thus you 
see how desirous all are for some Token for Good & how 
they catch at the smallest Shadowes for it. But the best 
Sign of all, I doubt, is much wanting: & that is, the Refor- 
mation of mens manners, — of which I heare little; unlesse 
that those come to Church, who did not before. ... A sad 
Thing, that the Event of these Iudgments proves no better! 
But so it comonly falls out, & men soon forget both their 
Smart, & also the good Resolutions which it formed. I 
hope, my Friend, the Hand of God will not be without its 

[159] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

a great Wisdome, as well as Iustice, in this Restraint which 
I now suffer, & therefore I thankfully accept it, & intreat 
you to assist mee with your Prayers, that I may both un- 
derstand the meaning of it, & likewise make the right use 
which God intends. I must ever also acknowledge a won- 
derf ull Kindnesse of God to mee mixed with this ; for I am 
well & chearfull to my Admiration & Astonishment, when 
I seriously think of it. I could not have expected to spend 
my Time, & find it so little a Burden to mee, as it used now 
& then to be when I was alone. The long Evenings, when I 
see none (I give God Thanks) pass away without any Irk- 
somenesse at all. I have quite changed my Diet. I eat 
boiled Meats & Broth more then I used : something at Sup- 
per also, which does not hinder my Thoughts. You see I 
take Care of myself, & by this long Letter will perceive 
that you are much in the Thoughts of your ever affect: 
Friend 

S. P. 

Sat: Night, Oct: 7. 1665. 
I have taken a little Cold, which hath put some Damp 
upon my Spirits — I knew it would be so, — for I felt the 
Wind strike into my Head as I was burying a Corpse one 
Night. That is a Thing I have oft found prejudiciall : but 
there is no Body else to do it now. I think too sometimes 
I have too great a Burden of Worke upon mee : but hither- 
to I go through it very well; only I am sometimes a little 
weary after preaching twice; especially when the Fast Week 
comes. It comes now & then into my Wishes, that I was 
more free from this Kind of Buisinesse in a Parish; for I 
suppose I could profitably employ my Time in some other 
Way. But I check myself in this & a great many other 
Wishes, knowing there is no Contentment but in conforming 
our Wills to our present Conditions. . . . 1 Wee are in great 
Hopes of a considerable Decrease this Week. Here indeed 
wee have buried many, & so they do at Westminster, as D r - 
Outram tells mee; but in other Places the Bells do not go so 

1 After the Plague, Patrick was raised to the bishopric of Chiches- 
ter and, later, to that of Ely. 

[160] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Instruction to us, & that wee shall be carefull, if he let us 
live, to improve it as we ought. I cannot but acknowledge 
oft. I must correct an Error in my last but one M T - Welbank 
is not dead, as was reported : it is the Curate, one M r - Knight- 
ley, who, they say, did not dye of the Sicknesse neither. 
This was Occasion of the Report that M T - Shilling fleet was 
dead; the Reader of St. Andrew's Holborne dying a good 
while ago; but as for M T - Shillingfleet he has not beene here 
along Time but gets his Place supplyed by somebody. . . . 

Yours very affectionately, 

8. P. 

Octob: 12. [1665]. 
My Friend, 

It happens to be such a bright Night, that I cannot 
say all that I would. I have not had so many Burialls a 
great while, & I deferred to write till Night, being with my 
Brother at Battersea all Day. The Sicknesse is not de- 
creased so much as wee expected: but wee ought to be very 
thankful for any Abatement. There are 652 less this Week 
then the last. There dyed here [in my Parish] but 15, 
which is 10 less then the Weeke before. How it will be this 
Week I know not; but there are 9 dead already, 6 being 
buried to Night. In the next Parish of St. Martin's there 
dyed no more to Day, which gives Hope still of a Decrease 
there. The Sicknesse is much at Wandsworth, where 24 
dyed in one Week. It is got into Wiltshire also, & is very 
neare Sir W. S t - Iohn's, so that they have sent their Chil- 
dren away to M T - Bernard's neare Huntingdon. It is a very 
sad Time I perceive every where, & I must acknowledge it a 
very singular Favour of God, that I am so much supported. 
I hope I shall not forget his Goodnesse if he let me live to 
see more healthfull & pleasant Seasons. He knows how 
long it is necessary to keep us under, & how much Time is 
Requisite to make us thoroughly serious. If that be but 
effected, we shall have a more sober Ioy hereafter. . . . 

S.P. 

[161] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Covent Garden, Oct. 14 [1665] 

People are grown bold, & because they find themselves 
well, they think their Neighbours ought not to shun them, 
though they have some dye of the Plague in their Houses. 
In many Places they do not shut them up, & so they take 
their Liberty to come abroad ; and there also when they 
need not, & where they ought to be more civill. But wee 
must not expect that from ordinary People: it is a Thing 
proper to better bred Souls. If the Vulgar be not intoller- 
ably rude, we are beholden to them. 

From your affectionate Friend 

flfr- Patrick. 

Octob: 17. [1665]. 

Wee expect a very great abatement this Week in the 
Whole, though here [in my Parish] wee buried one more 
then last Week. The Citty Remembrancer told a Friend of 
mine, that there are 1500 lesse without the Walls then last 
Week, beside the Decrease in the Citty. I heare M r - 
Iohn Goodwin is dead somewhere in Essex. It is said that 
D r - Bolton also is dead in the Country whether he went be- 
cause of the Contagion. 

I am your affect: Friend 

8. P. 
Oct: 21. [1665]. 

M r - Cradock writes me word, he hath a great mind to 
return, tho' there is no Term here, & I think he will have no 
Employment. . . . 

My poor Clarke . . . hath had his Family sadly visited. 
His Wife & 7 Children (all he hath) have beene all sicke: & 
now his Wife & one Child are dead, & she big with Child. 
The Rest are like to do well, & I hope I have saved the poor 
Man by timely Advice to remove himself, that he may take 
Care of all the Rest. 

Your affectionate Friend, 

S.P. 
[162] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Nov: 7. 1665. 
My Friend, 

I have made further Enquiries about the Accesse of 
People to London, & their State of Health since they came, 
but can find no Ground for those sad Reports which you 
have. This I find, that the same Storyes are spread in other 
Countries, & People are thereby affrighted from coming 
thither: but there is no Cause, as farre as I can learne. 
Yesterday I met M T - Holliard, (who askt very kindly of 
you) who told mee he heard 2 Linen Drapers in Cornwall 
were returned, & dead : but he enquired of their Neighbours, 
& they knew of no such Thing. Yet I think my Church- 
Warden says well, That of all the Lyes he hath heard, he 
thinks this will do least Harm: for it will keep People from 
flocking too fast to London, which otherwise they might be 
apt to do. The Soldiers (who have hitherto beene quartered 
in Tents in Hyde Park) returned yesterday into the Citty; 
I suppose because of the Weather, which may indanger their 
Healths more then this Place. . . . 

[8. P.] 

Nov: 9. [1665]. 
My deare Friend. 

I suppose you will heare before this can reach you, 
that the Sicknesse did not decrease so much last Week, but 
it has increased as much in this that is nearly past — I have 
walked to Battersea and back againe with a great Deale 
of Ease this Day. They have had none dye there this Fort- 
night; but at Wandsworth there is still a great Mortality: 
there are 12 dead since Sunday, as one of the Parish tells 
mee. You may think the Increase of the Sicknesse here 
comes from the Accesse of more People: but I think it is 
otherwise: for it is much increased in Lambeth, & in 
Wandsworth ( as I told you) from whence People rather 
run away. It is to be ascribed rather to the unseasonable 
Weather that hath beene of late; & most of all to the wise 
Goodnesse of God, who intends to shew, that wee are not 
yet so safe as sucure Sinners imagin. I observe that Peo- 

[163] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

pie grow remisse already, & their Fervours are already 
cooled. Wee had nothing so good a Congregation yesterday 
as wee used to have : & therefore God may in mercy quicken 
us againe to mind our Duty, & rouse up dull Souls by this 
new Alarm. At least it may have this Effect, to keepe from 
flocking to the Towne as fast as they may be disposed to ; & 
also continue in Men's Minds a Dread of the Sickness e, 
whenever wee mention it, which is so unaccountable. You 
hope, I see, that I should be able to acquaint you with its 
Nature: but truly, after all my Inquiries & Observations, I 
can learne little. But that it seises upon People strangely, 
& handles them variously. Some are affected in one manner, 
& some another, & some are smitten that stir not half so 
much abroad as 7. But this will be too long a Discourse. I 
do not heare neither of any of your Acquaintance dead : but 
I said, I believe, wee shall miss many in the Conclusion; 
because I heare now & then of some that I knewe that are 
swept away a good many Weeks ago, before I heard of it. 
Wee have but a few dead in the Parish this Week, (Thanks 
be to God for it) though all our neighbouring Parishes 
have had an Increase &c. 

Your most affectionate Friend 

S.P. 

Dec: 5. [1665]. 
My Friend, 

Just now came Newes to mee by one that is come from 
the Clarks Hall, that the Sicknesse is decreased above an 
100; which is a great Mercy; for we feared an Increase. The 
just Number they would not declare, because my L d - Mayor 
must have it first: & I heard lately that he imprisoned one 
of the Officers, because they spread Abroad the Account, 
before they came to him: which indeed was unhandsome. 
There was not one dyed at Westminster on Sunday last; 
which is a Thing seldome happens in healthfull Times. 

Farewell. 

[S. P.] 
[164] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

December 14. [1665]. 
My Friend, 

I cannot send you so good Newes as I did the last Week 
of the Decrease of the Sicknesse. ... It is not much in- 
deed: but it's something sad at this Time of the Yeare, not 
to see it still fall more & more. So wee promised ourselves 
that it would; & many are returned upon that Presumption. 
But wee must all look up to an higher Hand, who still thinks 
good to hold his Rod over us, & who alters the Weather as 
he pleases; on which depends very much, I persuade my- 
self, these Ebbs & Flows of this Disease. If it do not leave 
us this Winter, God knows when I shall see you : for I sup- 
pose you will scarce be persuaded to come to Clapham, 
though you love it so well, if the Citty be not quite clear of 
it. . . . I have enquired, I assure you, about a Man to do 
my Buiinesse here sometimes : but the Towne is empty of all 
such Persons; & he that was wont to do it is dead, I am 
sure; for I buried him; it being his Desire, though he 
lived in S l - Martin's Parish. I am apt to think sometimes, 
that none of my Neighbours are so burthened as I : but Use 
& Custome hath now made it easy, & I forget what it is that 
I do continually. . . . 

[S. P.] 

Decemb r 21. [1665]. 
The Towne now begins to fill againe. . . . There is a 
great Increase of the Sicknesse this Week. . . . 

[8. P.] 

Decemb r 23 [1665]. 
Wee have never a one yet dead of the Plague [in our 
Parish, this Week], as it is judged: though 3 of other Dis- 

eases. . . . 

[S. P.) 



[165] 



APPENDIX J 

From Flavius Josephus, Works, 7th ed. (1773), Vol. 
IV, Bk. VII, Ch. 12. 

How easily were these superstitious wretches [i. e. the 
Jews] seduced into a belief of false oracles, counterfeits 
and impostors! But when they were at any time premon- 
ished from the lips of truth itself, by prodigies, and other 
monitory prognostics of their approaching ruin, they had 
neither eyes, ears nor understanding to make right use or 
application of them. As for example now, 

What shall we say to the comet that hung over Jeru- 
salem one whole year together, in the figure of a sword? 

What shall we think again of that wonderful light that 
was seen about the altar . . . and continued for the space of 
half an hour as bright as day. This prodigy was looked 
upon by the ignorant as a good omen ; but it was expounded 
by those who knew better things, as the forerunner of a 
war; and the mystery unfolded before it came to pass. 

At the same festival [of the Paschal Feast], there was 
another prodigy of a cow delivered of a lamb in the middle 
of the temple, as they were leading her up to the altar for 
sacrifice. 

The eastern gate of the inner temple was made of solid 
brass ; and so very heavy that it was as much as twenty men 
could do every night to shut it : besides that it was fastened 
with iron bolts and bars, mortissed into a huge thres- 
hold of one entire stone. This gate, about the sixth hour 
of the night, opened of itself: and . . . the wiser sort . . . 
foretold desolation to the city. 

Some short time after the festival was over, . . . there 
appeared a prodigy of a vision so extraordinary, that I 
should hardly venture to report it, if I could not produce 
several eye-witnesses that are yet living to confirm the truth 

[166] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

of it ; and if the calamities that were foretold, had not come 
to pass. There were seen up and down in the air, before 
sun-set, chariots and armed men all over the country, pass- 
ing along with the clouds round about the city. 

Upon the feast of Pentecost, as the priests were' a-going 
to officiate, . . . they heard at first a kind of confused mur- 
mur; and after that, a voice calling out earnestly in articu- 
late words, Let us be gone, let us be gone. 

But I come now to a story that passes all the rest. A 
matter of four years before the war [with Titus], when the 
city was in a profound peace, and flowing in plenty, there 
was one Jesus the son of Ananus, a plain country fellow, 
who coming to the feast of Tabernacles . . . brake out on a 
sudden into this exclamation over and over. "A voice from 
the east, a voice from the west; a voice from the four 
quarters of the world; a voice to Jerusalem, and a voice to 
the temple ; a voice to new married men and women ; and a 
voice to the whole nation." This was his cry day and 
night, from place to place, through every street of the city. 
Some great men in the government took such great of- 
fence at so ill boding a liberty, that they ordered the man to 
be taken up and severely whipt. He took the punishment 
without returning so much as one word, either by the by, or 
in his own defence, or to complain of hard measure; but 
still he went on and on with the same things over and over 
again, calling and denouncing as before. The magistrates 
began now to inspect (as they had reason for it) somewhat 
of a divine impulse in what he said; and that he spake by 
an extraordinary spirit. He was carried, upon this, to Al- 
binus the governor of Judaea; who caused him to be lashed 
to the very bones, which he took without either tears or sup- 
plication; only in a mournful voice, as well as he could, he 
followed every stroke with a Wo, wo to Jerusalem! Albinus, 
as his judge, fell then to asking him what he was, whence 
he came, where he was born, and what he meant by that way 
of proceeding? But he gave him no answer. This was his 
way all along, till Albinus was fain to discharge him at last 
as a madman. From that time to the beginning of the war, 

[167] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

he was never known to visit or speak to any of the citizens ; 
or to make use of any other than that doleful form of 
words, Wo, wo to Jerusalem! He never gave an ill word to 
those that daily scourged him, or a good one even to those 
that fed him: but his answer was to all people alike, an 
ominous presage. He was observed to be still more clam- 
orous upon festivals, than upon other days: at this rate he 
went on for seven years and five months ; and neither his 
voice nor his strength failing him, till the seige of Jerusalem 
verified his predictions. After this he took the tour of the 
wall once again, crying out, with a stronger voice than or- 
dinary, Wo, wo to this city, this temple, and this people! 
concluding at last with a Wo, wo be to myself! And in this 
instant he was taken off with a stone from an engine in the 
middle of all his forebodings. 



[168] 



APPENDIX K. 

From the Bills of Mortality. 

General Bills of the Plague in London and Suburbs from 

1603 to 1666. 2 

Year Plague Year Plague 

1603 33,417 1635 

1604 896 1636 10,400 

1605 444 1637 3,082 

1606 ,.. 2,124 1638 363 

1607 2,352 1639 314 

1608 2,262 1640 1,450 

1609 4,240 1641 ,. . 1,375 

1610 1,803 1642..... 1,274 

1643 996 

1644 1,492 

1645 1,871 

1646 2,365 

1647 3,597 

1648 611 

1649 67 

1650 15 

1651 23 

1652 16 

1653 , 6 

1654 16 

1655 9 

1656 , 6 

1657 4 

1658 14 

1659 36 

1660 13 

1661 20 

1662 15 

* The only Bills before 1603 are for 1592 (Men. -Dec.) wh.-n 11,503 
died of the Plague. 

[109] 



1611 


627 


1612 


64 


1613. 


16 


1614 


22 


1615 


37 


1616 


9 


1617 


6 


1618 


18 


1619 


9 


1620 


2 


1621 


11 


1622 


16 


1623 


17 


1624 





1625 


35,417 


1626 


634 


1627 


4 


1628 


3 


1629 





1630 


1,317 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 



1631 


274 


1663 


12 


1632 


8 


1664 


5 


1633 





*1665 , 


68,596 


1634 


.... 1 


tl666 


1,998 



* Dec. 20, 1664 to Dec. 19, 1665. 
t Dec. 20, 1665 to Dec. 19, 1666. 



The Weekly Bills of Mortality in London and Suburbs 
from 20 Dee., 1664 to 19 Dec., 1665. 



Week 
Week 


97 16 

Parishes within Parishes 
the Walls. Without, 
ending Ttl. PI. Ttl. PI. 
97 16 
Parishes within Parishes 
the Walls. Without, 
ending Ttl. PI. Ttl. PI. 


12 Out- 
Parishes of 
Mid. & Surrey. 
Ttl. PI. 

12 Out- 
Parishes of 
Mid. & Surrey. 
Ttl. PI. 


5 

Westm. 

Parishes. 

Ttl. PI. 

5 

Westm. 

Parishes. 

Ttl. PI. 


Dec. 


27, 1664 


60 





125 





67 


1 


39 





Jan. 


3, 1665 


66 





136 





102 





45 





Jan. 


10, 1665 


95 





142 





100 





57 





Jan. 


17, 1665 


90 





154 





113 





58 





Jan. 


24, 1665 


104 





184 





118 





68 





Jan. 


31, 1665 


88 





143 





115 





63 





Feb. 


7, 1665 


80 





150 





99 





64 





Feb. 


14, 1665 


85 





180 





121 


1 


76 





Feb. 


21, 1665 


82 





158 





89 





64 





Feb. 


28, 1665 


67 





156 





106 





67 





Mch. 


7, 1665 


83 





176 





165 





77 





Mch. 


14, 1665 


72 





197 





105 





59 





Mch. 


21, 1665 


69 





133 





98 





63 





Mch. 


28, 1665 


68 





160 





74 





51 





Apr. 


4, 1665 


74 





138 





86 





46 





Apr. 


11, 1665 


81 





149 


<0 


107 





45 





Apr. 


18, 1665 


66 





126 





93 





59 





Apr. 


25, 1665 


65 





145 





119 





69 





May 


2, 1665 


70 





125 





127 





66 





May 


9, 1665 


54 


1 


123 


1 


114 


1 


56 


4 


May 


16, 1665 


55 





126 





116 


1 


56 


2 



[170] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

May 23, 1665 63 125 2 129 7 63 5 

May 30, 1665 56 127 4 145 9 72 4 

June 6, 1665 69 135 10 138 32 63 1 

June 13, 1665 67 4 179 27 238 71 74 10 

June 20, 1665 64 10 192 34 258 105 101 19 

June 27, 1665 49 4 225 55 291 153 119 55 

July 4, 1665 93 23 360 166 345 176 208 105 

July 11, 1665 86 28 473 251 455 286 254 160 

July 18, 1665 141 56 735 416 595 417 290 200 

July 25, 1665 241 128 1210 755 857 628 477 332 

Aug. 1, 1665 228 111 1539 990 804 587 443 322 

Aug. 8, 1665 341 208 1992 1280 1105 879 592 450 

Aug. 15, 1665 496 304 2747 1924 1404 1119 672 533 

Aug. 22, 1665 538 366 2861 2139 1571 1244 598 488 

Aug. 29, 1665 933 700 3627 2928 2045 1759 891 715 

Sept. 5, 1665 1118 864 3736 3151 2549 2261 849 712 

Sept. 12, 1665 1154 896 3488 2936 2250 2030 798 681 

Sept. 19, 1665 1493 1189 3631 3070 2258 2091 915 815 

Sept. 26, 1665 1268 1025 2688 2252 1794 1643 710 613 

Oct. 3, 1665 1149 948 2258 1922 1623 1469 690 590 

Oct. 10, 1665 1109 916 1850 1570 1512 1340 597 501 

Oct. 17, 1665 774 646 1150 929 835 791 360 299 

Oct. 24, 1665 392 295 603 456 601 498 210 172 

Oct. 31, 1665 325 233 470 356 435 323 158 119 

Nov. 7, 1665 418 314 546 445 609 488 214 167 

Nov. 14, 1665 346 262 397 209 460 376 156 103 

Nov. 21, 1665 195 127 298 217 302 235 110 73 

Nov. 28, 1665 136 82 156 82 178 125 74 44 

Dec. 5, 1665 71 24 139 64 160 90 58 32 

Dec. 12, 1665 94 57 132 70 147 74 69 42 

Dec. 19, 1665 126 66 156 75 187 106 56 34 



[171] 



APPENDIX L. 

A general Bill of Mortality by Parishes for the Year 

ending Dec. 19, 1665. 

From Bell's London's Remembrancer. 

The 97 Parishes within the Walls. 

Total 
Burials Plague 

St. Albans Woodstreet 200 121 

St. Alhollowes Barking 514 330 

St. Alhollowes Breadstreet 35 16 

St. Alhollowes the Great 455 426 

St. Alhollowes Hony-lane 10 5 

St. Alhollowes the Lesse 239 175 

St. Alhollowes Lumbardstr 90 62 

St. Alhollowes Staining 185 112 

St. Alhollowes the Wall 500 356 

St. Alphage 271 115 

St. Andrew Hubbard 71 25 

St- Andrew Vndershaft 274 189 

St. Andrew Wardrobe 476 308 

St. Aldersgate 282 197 

St. Anne Black-Friars 652 467 

St. Antholins Parish 58 33 

St. Austins Parish 43 20 

St. Barthol. Exchange 73 51 

St. Bennet Fynch 47 22 

St. Bennet Gracechurch 57 41 

St. Bennet Pauls Wharf 355 172 

St. Bennet Sherehog 11 1 

St. Botolph Billingsgate 83 50 

Christs Church 653 467 

St. Christophers 60 47 

St. Clements Eastcheap 38 20 

St. Dionis Back-church 78 27 

[172] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

Total 
Burials Plague 

St. Dunstans East 265 150 

St. Edmunds Lumbard 70 30 

St. Ethelborough 195 106 

St. Faiths 104 70 

St. Fosters 144 105 

St. Gabriel Fenchurch 69 39 

St. George Botolphlane 41 27 

St. Gregories by Pauls 376 232 

St. Hellens 108 75 

St. James Dukes place 262 190 

St. James Garlickhithe 189 118 

St. John Baptist 138 83 

St. John Evangelist 9 

St. John Zacharie 85 54 

St. Katherine Coleman-streete 299 213 

St. Katherine Creech 335 231 

St. Lawrence Iewry 94 48 

St. Lawrence Pountney 214 140 

St. Leonard Eastcheap 42 27 

St. Leonard Fosterlane 335 255 

St. Magnus Parish 103 60 

St. Margaret Lothbury 100 66 

St. Margaret Moses 38 25 

St. Margaret Newfishst 114 66 

St. Margaret Pattons 49 24 

St. Mary Abchurch 99 54 

St. Mary Aldermanbury 181 109 

St. Mary Aldermary 105 75 

St. Mary le Bow 64 36 

St. Mary Bothow 55 30 

St. Mary Colechurch 17 6 

St. Mary Hill 94 64 

St. Mary Mounthaw 56 37 

St. Mary Summerset 342 2(12 

St. Mary Stayning 47 27 

St. Mary Woolchurch 65 33 

[173] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Total 
Burials Plague 

St. Mary Woolnoth 75 38 

St. Martins Ironmonger 21 11 

St. Martins Ludgate 196 128 

St. Martins Orgars 110 71 

St. Martins Outwieh 60 34 

St. Martins Vintrey 417 349 

St. Matthew Fridaystreet 24 6 

St. Maudlins Milkstreet 44 22 

St. Maudlins Oldfishstreet 176 121 

St. Michael Bassishaw 253 164 

St. Michael Cornhill 104 52 

St. Michael Crookedlane 179 133 

St. Michael Queenhith 203 122 

St. Michael Queene 44 18 

St. Michael Royall 152 116 

St. Michael Woodstreet 122 62 

St. Mildred Breadstreet 59 26 

St. Mildred Poultrey 68 46 

St. Nicholas Aeons 46 28 

St. Nicholas Coleabby 125 91 

St. Nicholas Olave 90 62 

St. Olaves Hartstreet 237 160 

St. Olaves Iewry 54 32 

St. Olaves Silverstreete 250 132 

St. Pancras Soperlane 30 15 

St. Peters Cheaps 61 35 

St. Peters Cornhill 136 76 

St. Peters Pauls Wharfe 114 86 

St. Peters Poore 79 47 

St. Stevens Colmanstr 560 391 

St. Stevens Walbrooke 34 17 

St. Swithins 93 56 

St. Thomas Apostle 163 110 

Trinitie Parish 115 79 

Buried in the 97 Parishes within the walls. 15,207 

Whereof of the Plague 9,887 

[174] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

The 16 Parishes without the Walls. 

Total 
Burials Plague 

St. Andrew Holborne 3958 3103 

St. Bartholomew Great 493 344 

St. Bartholomew Lesse 193 139 

St. Bridget 2111 1407 

Bridewell Precinct 230 179 

St. Botolph Aldersgate 997 755 

St. Botolph Aldgate 4926 4051 

St. Botolph Bishopsgate 3464 2500 

St. Dunstans West 958 665 

St. George Southwark 1613 1260 

St. Giles Cripplegate 8069 4838 

St. Olaves Southwark 4793 2785 

St. Saviours Southwark 4235 3446 

St. Sepulchres Parish 4509 2746 

St. Thomas Southwark 475 371 

Trinity Minories 168 123 

At the Pesthouse 159 156 

Buried in the 16 Parishes without the Walls, 41,851 
Whereof of the Plague 28,888 

The 12 Out-Parishes in Middlesex and Surrey. 

St. Giles in the Fields 4457 3216 

Hackney Parish 232 132 

St. James Clarkenwell 1863 1377 

St. Katherines Tower 956 601 

Lamberth Parish 798 537 

St. Leonards Shoreditch 2669 1949 

St. Magdalen Bermondsey 1943 1362 

St. Mary Newington 1272 1004 

St. Mary Islington . . 696 593 

St. Mary Whitechappel 47(J(J 3855 

Redriffe Parish 304 210 

Stepney Parish 8598 6583 

[175] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

Total 
Burials Plague 

Buried in the 12 Out-Parishes of Middlesex 

and Surrey 28,554 

Whereof of the Plague 21,420 

The 5 Parishes in Westminster. 

St. Clement Danes 1969 1319 

St. Paul Covent Garden 408 261 

St. Martins in the Fields 4804 2883 

St. Mary Savoy 303 198 

S*. Margaret Westm 4710 3742 

Whereof at the Pesthouse 156 

Buried in the five Parishes of Westminster, 12,194 
Whereof of the the Plague 68,596 

The total of all the Christenings for the year 9,967 

The total of all the Burials 97,306 

Whereof, of the Plague 68,596 



[176] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 8 

BELL, JOHN 

London 's Remembrancer: Or, A true Aecompt of 
every particular Weeks Christenings and Mortality in all 
the Years of Pestilence within the Cognizance of the Bills 
of Mortality Being XVIII Years. Taken out of the Reg- 
ister of the Company of Parish Clerks of London, &c. To- 
gether with Several Observations on the said Years, and 
some of their Precedent and Subsequent Years. Published 
for General satisfaction, and for prevention of false 
Papers. By John Bell Clerk to the said Company. 1665. 
BEZE, THEODORE DE 

A shorte learned and pithie Treatize of the Plague, 
where in are handled these two questions: The one, 
whether the Plague bee infectious or no: The other, 
whether and howe farre it may of Christians bee shunned 
by going aside. A discourse very necessary for this our 
tyne, and country; to satisfie the doubtful consciences, of 
a great number. Written in Latin by the famous & 
worthy diuine Theodore Beza Yezelien; and newly turned 
into English, by John Stockwood, Schoolmaister of Tun- 
bridge. B. L., 1580. (There is also a Latin ed. of this 
book, 1636, and another English ed. 1665.) 
BOGHURST, WILLIAM, M. D. 

Loimographia. An Account of the Great Plague of 
London in the Year 1665. Now first printed from the 
British Museum Sloane MS. 349 for the Epidemiological 
Society. Edited by Joseph Frank Payne, M. D. Late 
President of the Society. 1894. 
BROOKES, RICHARD, M. D. 

A History of the most Remarkable Pestilential Dis- 
tempers that have appeared in Europe for Three Hundred 
Years last past; with what proved Successful or Hurtful 
in their Cure, etc. 1721. 

3 No claim is here made of an exhaustive bibliography of Plague 
literature, but only those titles of leading importance which 
were accessible to Defoe are included. As already pointed out, 
Boghurst's "Loimographia" was unknown to Defoe. 

[177] 



HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

BROWNE, JOSEPH 

A practical Treatise of the Plague and all Pestilential 
Infections that have happened in this Island for the last 
Century, etc. 1720. 
CADE, JAMES 

Londons Disease and Remedy, or a short and plain 
Discourse pointing at some probable causes of this present 
Judgement that lyes upon us together with the most ef- 
fectual way and means for the removal of it. By Ja. Cade 
B. D. Rector of St. Andrew Wardrobe, London. 1665. 
CHICOYNEAU, FRANCOIS 

Relation de la Peste Marseille, donnee par MM. 
Chicoyneau, Verny et Soullier. Geneve: 1721. (An Eng- 
lish translation in London the same year. See also Mau- 
rice de Toulon.) 
COCK, THOMAS 

Hygiene, or, a Plain and Practical Discourse upon 
the first of the six Non-Naturals, viz, Air, etc. 1665. 
COLBATCH, SIR JOHN 

A Scheme for Proper Methods to be taken should it 
please God to visit us with the Plague. 1721. 
DIEMERBROICK, ISBRANDUS 

Tractatus de Peste. Arnheim: 1646. 2nd ed. Am- 
sterdam: 1665. Extracts from this highly important 
work were translated into English and printed in Lon- 
don in 1666 under the title of "Several Choice Histories 
[i. e. Cases] of the Medicines Manner and Method in the 
Cure of the Plague,' ' etc. 

DIRECTIONS for the Cure of the Plague as for Pre- 
venting the Infection, etc., set down by the College of 
Physicians. By the Kings Majesties Special Command. 
May, 1665. 

DIRECTIONS for the Prevention and Cure of the 
Plague Fitted for the Poorer sort. 1665. 

DISTINCT NOTES of the Plague. By the Explainer. 
1722. (This was written in answer to "Some Remarks on 

[178] 



OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

three Treatises of the Plague," etc., g. v.) 
FEATLY, JOHN 

A Divine Antidote against the Plague; or Mourning 
Tears, in Soliliquies and Prayers : As 1. For this General 
Visitation. 2. For those whose houses are shut up of 
the Plague. 3. For those who have Risings and Swell- 
ings. 4. For those marked with the Tokens. Necessary 
for all Families as well in the Country as in the City, in 
the time of Pestilence. By John Featly, Chaplain to His 
late Majesty [Charles I]. 1665. 
GADBURY, JOHN 

Londons Deliverance Praedieted; in a Short Discourse 
on Plagues in General. August 1665. 
GARENCIERES, THEOPHILUS, DR. 

A Mite cast into the Treasury of the City of London: 
A Discourse on the Plague. 1665. 

GOLGOTHA; or, a Looking-Glass for London, and the 
Suburbs thereof. Shewing the Causes, Nature and Ef- 
ficacy of the present Plague, and the most hopeful 
Way for Healing. With an humble Witness against 
the Cruel Advice and Practice of Shutting up unto Op- 
pression. Both now and formerly experienced to in- 
crease, rather then prevent the spreading thereof. By 
J. V. grieved for the Poor, who perish daily hereby. 
London, Printed for the Author, Anno, 1665. 
GRAUNT, JOHN 

Reflections on the Weekly Bills of Mortality, for the 
Cities of London and Westminster, and the Places adjacent : 
But more especially, so far as they relate to the Plague, and 
other Mortal Diseases that we English-men are most subject 
to. With an Exact Account of the greatest Plagues that 
ever happened since the Creation; and of the Weekly Bills 
of the four great Plagues in London, compared with those 
of this present year. 1665. 
HARVEY, GIDEON, M. D. 

A Discourse of the Plague, etc. 1665. 
HODGES, NATHANIEL, M. D. 

Loimologia, sive Pestis nuperae apud Populum Lond- 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

inensem grassantis narratio. 1672. (Translated into Eng- 
lish by Dr. John Quincy, 1720.) 

An Account of the Rise, Progress, Symptoms and Cure 
of the Plague, being the substance of a Letter from Doctor 
Hodges to a Person of Quality. May, 1666. (Whether or 
not this letter was printed the same year it was written, I 
am not sure. It appears, however, in "A Collection of very 
valuable and scarce Pieces," etc., 1721. Ed.) 
KEMP, W. 

A Brief Treatise of the Nature, Causes, Signes, Preser- 
vation from, and Cure of the Pestilence. Collected by W. 
Kemp, Mr. of Arts, MDCLXV. 

LONDON'S DREADFUL VISITATION: Or, a Collection 
of all the Bills of Mortality for this Present Year: Be- 
ginning the 27 th - [an error for the 20th.] of Decem- 
ber 1664. and ending 19 th - of December following: As 
also, The General or whole years Bill : According to the 
Report made to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, 
By the Company of Parish Clerks of London, &c. 1665. 
MASSA, N. 

Liber N. Massae de Peste Contractus. 1721. 
MAURICE DE TOULON. 

Traite de la Peste. Geneve: 1721. (Accounts of the 
Plague at Naples, Marseilles, etc.) 
MEAD, RICHARD, M. D. 

A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, 
and the Methods to be used to prevent it. 1720. (This 
book went through six editions before the close of 1720, a 
7th ed. in 1721, an 8th in 1722, and a 9th in 1744.) 
DOCTOR MEAD'S Discourse explain'd. 1722. 
PATRICK, SIMON 

A Brief Exhortation to those who are shut up from 
our Society, and deprived at present of Public Instruction. 
1665. 

A Consolatory Discourse, perswading to a chearful 
Trust in God in these Times of trouble and danger. By 
Simon Patrick, Rector of St. Pauls Covent Garden. 1665. 

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OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

POORE MANS IEWELL, The 

that is to say, a Treatise of the Pestilence. Vnto the 
which is annexed a declaration of the vertues of the hearbes 
Carduus Benedictus, and Angelica: which are verie medi- 
cinable, both against the Plague, and also against many 
other diseases. Gathered out of the books of diuers learned 
Physitions. Imprinted at London for George Byshop, 
Anno 1579. 
PYE, GEORGE, M. D. 

A Discourse of the Plague; wherein Dr. Mead's Notions 
are . . . refuted. 1721. 
QUINCY, JOHN, M. D. 

An Essay on the Different Causes of Pestilential Dis- 
eases, and how they became Contagious. With Remarks 
upon the Infection now in France. 1720. 3rd ed. 1721. 
SHUTTING UP OF INFECTED HOUSES, The 

as it is practised in England, soberly debated. 1665. 
SOME OBSERVATION on the Plague, etc. 1721. 
SOME REMARKS on three Treatises of the Plague, viz. 

1. Dr. Meads' Short Discourse; 2. Dr. Mead's Short 
Discourse Explained; 3. Dr. Pye's Discourse of the Plague. 
1721,1722. 
SYDENHAM, THOMAS, M. D. 

Febris pestilentialis et pestis annorum 1665-6. 

Observationes Medicae circa Morborum acutorum his- 
toriam et curationem. 1676. 
THOMSON, GEORGE 

Loimotomia, or the Pest Anatomized. 1666. 
THUCYDIDES 

The Plague of Athens, which happened in the second 
year of the Peloppennesian Warre, first described in Greek 
by Thucydides, then in Latin by Lucretius. Now attempted 
in English by Tho Sprat, (An excellent Piece) Sold by 
Henry Brome at the Gun in Ivy Lane. 1665. 
VINCENT, THOMAS 

God's Terrible Voice in the City: wherein you have 

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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 

1. The sound of the Voice, in the Narration of the Two 
late Dreadful Judgments of Plague and Fire, inflicted by 
the Lord upon the City of London; the former in the 
Year 1665, the latter in the Year 1666. II. The Interpre- 
tation of the Voice, in a Discovery, 1. of the Cause of these 
Judgments, where you have a Catalogue of Londons sins. 

2. Of the Design of these Judgments, where you have an 
enumeration of the Duties God calls for by this Terrible 
Voice. Printed in the Year 1667. 

WILLIS, THOMAS, M. D. 

A plain and easie Method for preserving those that 
are well from the infection of the Plague . . . and for 
curing such as are infected with it. 1691. (Written in 
1666.) 

De Febribus, etc., 1659. 



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